I 


BV  4655  .J3  1898 

Jackson,  George,  1864-1945 

The  ten  commandments 


\V 


T^he  Ten  Commandments 


^^^^ 


fvlAR   3    1933 

The  Ten   Commandments 

By  George  Jackson^  B,A. 


New    Tork    Chicago    Toronto 
Fleming    H.    '^evell    Company 

Publis/iers  of  Evangelical  Literature 

1898 


TO 

W.  H.  ROLLS  :  H.  WATERWORTH 
J.  E.  DIXON  :  E.  A.  FRENCH 
F.   R.  WATSON  :  T.  W.  JAMIESON 

MY   COLLEAGUES,    PAST   AND    PRESENT 

IN    THE    WORK   OF 
THE  METHODIST  MISSION,  EDINBURGH 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

All  that  it  is  necessary  to  ask  the  reader  to  note  by 
way  of  Preface  is  that  the  following  chapters  were 
delivered  as  a  course  of  Sunday  Evening  Sermons 
to  my  own  congregation  during  the  months  of  last 
winter,  and  that,  though  they  have  since  been  en- 
tirely re-written,  they   still   remain   what  they  were 

originally,  sermons,  not  essays. 

G.J. 

Edinburgh,  October  1897. 


INTRODUCTORY 


'  And  God  spake  all  these  words,  saying,  I  am  the  Lord  thy  God, 
which  brought  thee  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  out  of  the  house  of 
bondage.' — ExoD.  xx.  i,  2. 


INTRODUCTORY 

Of  the  unique  position  once  held  by  the  Ten 
Commandments  among  the  most  religious  people  in 
the  world,  one  fact  is  a  sufficient  illustration  :  within 
the  Holy  Place  was  the  Holy  of  Holies,  wherein 
once  a  year  the  high  priest  entered  alone  to  offer 
up  sacrifices  both  for  himself  and  the  people  ;  within 
the  Holy  of  Holies  was  the  sacred  ark  ;  and  within 
the  ark,  shrined  in  the  innermost  sanctity  of  the 
Holy  Place,  were  the  two  tables  of  stone  whereon 
the  divine  finger  had  traced  the  eternal  law.  Could 
anything  indicate  more  clearly  the  reverence  paid 
to  the  Decalogue  by  the  Jews,  or  declare  with  more 
solemn  emphasis  that  the  end  of  all  religious  observ- 
ances is  the  keeping  of  the  commandments  of  God  ? 

But  Christ  having  come  (as  the  writer  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  says),  the  minister  of  a  new  and  better 
covenant,  it  was  no  longer  possible  that  the  command- 
ments should  be  to  the  Christian  all  that  they  had 
once  been  to  the  pious  Jew.  Yet  are  we  not  to-day 
in  danger  of  undervaluing  the  Ten  Words,  and  of 
thinking  that,  because  Christ  has  come,  therefore  they 
have  lost  for  us  all  their  deep  significance  ?     One  can 


10  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

only  judge  from  the  narrow  round  of  his  own  observa- 
tion ;  but  to  me,  at  least,  it  does  appear  that  there  is 
not  in  our  teaching  and  thinking  to-day  a  sufficient 
recognition  of  those  great  first  principles  of  morality 
which  are  here  set  forth.  It  was  a  remark  of  the  late 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  that  among  the  many  sermons 
to  which,  at  one  time  or  another,  he  had  listened,  he 
had  never  heard  one  on  the  Ten  Commandments.  I 
have  a  textual  index  to  some  two  or  three  thousand 
sermons  published  by  one  of  the  greatest  preachers 
of  our  day,  but  so  far  as  I  can  discover,  there  is  not 
one  dealing  with  any  of  the  precepts  of  the  Decalogue. 
I  do  not  forget  that  the  great  Anglican  Church 
appoints  the  commandments  to  be  read  at  every 
celebration  of  the  Holy  Communion  ;  but  neither 
can  I  forget,  on  the  other  hand,  that  when  a  distin- 
guished Presbyterian  minister  (Dr.  Robertson  of 
Irvine)  proposed  to  adopt  the  same  custom  in  his 
church  some  of  the  straiter  sect  immediately  raised  an 
outcry  about  *  dreadful  innovations.'  A  visitor  looking 
round  one  of  our  great  cathedrals  had  his  attention 
drawn  by  the  verger  to  a  wall  which  was  somewhat 
bare  and  in  need  of  decoration.  'You  know,' said  he, 
'  the  Ten  Commandments  might  be  painted  up ;  and 
the  Ten  Commandments,  sir,  are  better  than  nothing '  ; 
and,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  that  nai've  utterance  of 
the  cathedral  verger  was  only  a  blunt  expression 
of  the  indifference  with  which  multitudes  of  even 
Christian  people  regard  this  ancient  law. 


INTRODUCTORY  1 1 


But,  it  is  sometimes  said,  is  not  the  Decalogue  a 
very  crude  and  unfinished  code  of  morals  for  men 
to-day?  It  served  admirably  for  a  semi-barbarous 
people,  just  escaped  from  a  long  and  degrading 
captivity ;  but  just  because  it  did  so  serve,  how  is  it 
possible  that  it  should  be  adapted  for  us  in  these 
times?  Moreover,  what  does  it  consist  of  but 
bare  precepts,  negative  precepts  too — the  kind  of 
peremptory  unreasoning  admonitions  you  might 
address  to  a  child  ?  But  surely  we  have  out- 
grown the  need  of  these  ?  Why  trouble  us  with 
precepts  now  that  we  have  principles  which  supersede 
them  and  make  them  needless  ?  Did  not  Paul  say 
that  love  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  whole  law  ?  Did  not 
Christ  tell  us  that  upon  these  two  commandments, 
that  we  love  the  Lord  our  God  with  all  our  heart  and 
our  neighbour  as  ourselves,  hang  all  the  law  and  the 
prophets?  If  then  we  give  heed  to  the  eleventh 
commandment,  why  take  thought  for  the  rest  ? 

Reasoning  like  this,  which  is  very  common,  is  much 
more  plausible  than  conclusive,  as  one  or  two  con- 
siderations will  show  : — 

(i)  It  is  said  that  we  no  longer  need  the  detailed 
precepts  of  the  law,  now  that  Christ  has  given  us 
the  larger  law  of  love  which  includes  and  supersedes 
them.     And  undoubtedly,  if  man  were  wholly  ruled 


12  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

and  led  by  love,  there  would  be  little  need  to  preach 
to  him  the  simple  moralities  of  the  Decalogue,  to 
say  to  him,  *  Thou  shalt  not  kill,'  '  Thou  shalt  not 
steal,'  and  so  on.  But  how  much  can  we  build  on 
an  'if  like  that?  How  many  amongst  us  are  there 
who  are  so  ruled  and  led  ? 

Moreover,  do  we  not  see  illustrations  every  day 
how  even  love  itself  is  in  constant  need  of  definite 
and  detailed  guidance  ?  Because  your  children  love 
you,  you  do  not  cease  to  command  them  ;  you  do 
not  argue — at  least,  if  you  are  wise,  you  do  not — 
'  They  love,  that  is  enough  ;  let  them  do  what  they 
will.'  Men  may  love  their  fellows,  and  earnestly 
desire  their  country's  good  ;  nevertheless,  society 
makes  laws  for  them  which  it  compels  them  to 
obey ;  it  does  not  trust  the  general  principle  of 
brotherhood  or  patriotism  to  do  all  that  is  needful. 
And  though  in  the  Christian  life  it  may  be  true  that 
love  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  whole  law,  we  still  need 
the  directing  finger  and  the  guiding  voice  to  say, 
'  This  is  the  way,  walk  ye  in  it' 

(2)  But  it  is  alleged  that  the  morality  of  the 
Decalogue  is  crude  and  unfinished,  a  merely  'sur- 
face '  morality.  And  of  course  the  law  of  Moses — 
especially  if  in  our  interpretation  of  it  we  do  not 
go  beyond  the  letter  of  law — falls  immeasurably 
short  of  the  law  of  Christ.  But  a  *  surface  morality '  ? 
*  T/1021  shalt  not  kill,  Thou  shalt  not  steal,  Thou  shalt 
not  cormiiit  adultery — why,  all  these,'  says  some  one. 


INTRODUCTORY  1 3 

'have  I '      But    stay,   one   moment    before    you 

finish  the  quotation  ;  the  same  law  says — and  this  time 
I  do  not  ask  to  go  one  step  beyond  the  letter  of  what 
is  written — Thou  shalt  not  covet.  Who  wants  to  go 
on  with  the  quotation  now  ?  Who  is  there  of  us  who 
will  stand  up  and  say,  '  I  am  clean  even  from  this 
sin  '  ?  There,  surely,  is  a  morality  that  goes  deeper 
than  the  surface. 

But  the  most  important  fact  has  yet  to  be 
mentioned.  Precisely  what  this  ancient  law  meant 
to  those  who  first  received  it  I  do  not  now  stay  to 
discuss.  But — and  this  is  the  fact  to  be  emphasized 
— we  have  a  re-reading  of  it  from  the  lips  of  Christ; 
and  it  is  with  this  law,  as  Christ  has  interpreted  it, 
that  we  have  to  do.  Now  hear  Him  :  '  Ye  have  heard 
that  it  was  said  to  them  of  old  time.  Thou  shalt  not 
kill ;  and  whosoever  shall  kill  shall  be  in  danger  of 
the  judgment :  but  I  say  unto  you,  that  every  one 
who  is  angry  with  his  brother  shall  be  in  danger  of 
the  judgment.  ...  Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said, 
Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery  :  but  I  say  unto  you, 
that  every  one  that  looketh  on  a  woman  to  lust  after 
her,  hath  committed  adultery  with  her  already  in  his 
heart'  Let  a  man  shut  himself  up  in  the  quiet  of 
his  own  room,  and  listen  while  Christ  reads  over 
again  this  ancient  law,  and  we  shall  hear  no  more 
from  him  about  its  '  surface  morality ' ;  the  very  last 
thing  he  will  be  likely  to  say  of  it  is  that  it  does  not 
cut  deep  enough. 


14  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

But  however  we  may  estimate  the  law  given  by- 
Moses,  it  is  still  binding;^  and  however  our  relation 
to  it  may  have  been  modified  by  the  coming  of  Christ, 
this  at  least  is  clear,  the  keeping  of  the  command- 
ments of  God  is  not  less  but  more  incumbent  upon 
us  because  we  are  Christians.  The  verbs  of  the 
opening  sentence  of  this  chapter, '  God  spake  all  these 
words,  saying,'  should  both  be  read  in  the  present 
tense,  '  God  speaks  and  says.'  Some  of  us  have  an 
altogether  inverted  way  of  stating  our  relation  to  the 
Old  Testament  law.  A  Christian  man  rejoices  that 
he  is  free  from  the  hard,  mechanical  system  that 
imposed  the  law  of  tithes,  and  then  proceeds  to 
demonstrate  his  freedom  by  a  niggardliness  of  which 
any  honest  Jew  would  have  been  heartily  ashamed. 
Surely  that  is  the  very  acme  of  perverse  misconstruc- 
tion. If  we  are  freed  from  one  law,  it  is  only  because  we 
have  become  subject  to  another  and  a  higher.  We 
quit  the  service  of  one  master,  not  that  we  may  be 
chartered  libertines,  but  that  we  may  enter  the 
service  of  Another  whose  demands  are  even  more 
exacting.  More  than  is  here  God  now  asks  from 
us ;  but  He  still  asks  all  that  is  here.  God  still 
'  speaks  and  says ' ;  His  voice  has  lost  none  of 
its  old  imperative ;  and  they  only  are  well- 
pleasing   unto    Him   who  vow  as   did   the  children 

^  It  will  be  understood  that  I  am  here  speaking  of  the  Decalogue  as 
a  whole.  In  what  sense  the  Fourth  Commandment  is  of  perpetual 
obligation  I  have  tried  to  explain  further  on. 


INTRODUCTORY  1 5 

of  Israel :    *  All    that    the    Lord   hath    spoken    will 
we  do.' 

II 

Before  we  pass  to  the  consideration  of  the  com- 
mandments in  detail,  there  are  two  or  three  further 
matters  of  a  preliminary  character  that  call  for  brief 
notice. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  for  me  to  remind  you  that 
many  difficult  and  delicate  problems  touching  the 
Decalogue  have  been  raised  by  modern  criticism  of 
the  Old  Testament.  At  every  step  we  are  treading 
among  the  hot  embers  of  many  a  still  burning 
controversy.  But  inasmuch  as  my  purpose  in  these 
addresses  is  wholly  practical,  and  anything  I  have 
to  say  is  in  nowise  affected  by  the  final  decision  of 
scholarship  on  the  points  in  dispute,  whatever  it  may 
be,  I  shall  pass  over  these  matters  of  controversy  in 
silence.  In  what  sense  we  are  to  understand  the 
material  symbols  said  to  have  accompanied  the 
giving  of  the  law ;  what  was  the  exact  form  in 
which  it  was  first  proclaimed  by  Moses;  how  far 
that  original  draft  is  identical  with  that  familiar 
to  us ;  and  how  it  is  related  to  other  versions  of 
the  law  which  have  come  down  to  us  (as,  e.g.^  that 
contained  in  the  Deuteronomic  code) — all  these  are 
matters  which  we  may  confidently  leave  to  Biblical 
scholars  to  thresh  out  at  their  leisure  in  their  studies; 
they   do  not  concern   us  just  now,  and  to   attempt 


l6  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

to   discuss   them    would    be    as    impossible   as  it  is 
undesirable. 

One  thing  at  least  I  think  is  clear :  no  criticism 
can  diminish,  though  it  may  heighten,  our  sense  of 
the  greatness  and  majesty  of  that  ancient  moral  law, 
which,  like  another  Matterhorn,  rises  solitary  and 
incomparable  from  the  moral  wastes  that  surround  it. 
The  two  great  ideas  of  the  Decalogue  around  which, 
so  to  speak,  all  its  precepts  revolve,  are  these — 
God  and  duty.  Beginning  where  all  true  thinking 
must  begin,  with  the  true  idea  of  God  and  of  man's 
relation  to  Him,  it  passes  on  to  speak  of  man's 
relation  to  his  fellow-man.  And  when  we  think 
of  the  marvellous  enrichment  which  has  come  to 
the  whole  race  through  the  new  meaning  with  which 
these  two  great  ideas  were  henceforth  to  be  laden, 
it  is  not  easy  to  restrain  our  impatience  with  those 
superfine  critics  who,  using  the  light  of  the  very  law 
which  they  criticize,  can  see  in  the  Decalogue  only  the 
rough  incompleteness,  the  ragged  edges,  of  an  un- 
finished work.  Can  they — can  any  man — tell  how 
much  the  whole  world  owes  to-day  for  all  in  human  life 
that  is  strongest  and  truest,  all  that  is  most  gracious 
and  tender,  to  that  word  which  Moses  gave  to  Israel 
amid  the  deserts  of  Sinai  ?  To  us,  into  whose  lives 
its  great  and  simple  truths  have  entered,  till  they 
have  become  part  of  our  very  selves,  it  may  speak 
nothing  that  is  new,  nothing  that  is  remarkable, 
nothing  indeed  that  does  not  appear  perfectly  self- 


INTRODUCTORY  I7 

evident.  But  it  was  not  always  so.  Take,  e.g.,  its 
great  truth  concerning  God,  that  He  is  holy,  just, 
and  good,  and  that  He  demands  a  like  goodness 
from  them  that  worship  Him.  *  Of  course,'  we  say, 
'  of  course,  God  is  good.'  But  why  that  '  of  course '  ? 
Go  back  to  the  ancient  world,  and  it  was  not  so. 
As  Principal  Fairbairn  tells  us — and  no  man  living 
speaks  with  greater  authority  on  a  subject  like  this 
than  he  does — the  gods  there  were  not  good,  often 
most  utterly  iniquitous  and  bad.  '  In  India,  in  the 
old  hymns  you  could  get  written  in  honour  of  a  god 
a  drinking-song  that  any  man  in  these  days  in  an 
hour  of  hilarity  might  fitly  sing.  In  beautiful,  skilful, 
radiant  Greece,  what  was  Zeus,  their  great  god  ? — an 
adulterer ;  what  was  Aphrodite  ? — personified  lust. 
If  you  had  said  to  a  Greek,  "You  ought  to  be  god- 
like," he  would  have  said,  "  Nay,  I  will  be  man-like ; 
that  is  more  noble  and  honourable  than  to  live  after 
the  manner  of  the  gods."  And  if  you  had  gone  east 
into  Phoenicia,  where  the  neighbours  of  the  Jews 
lived,  what  would  you  have  found  ?  You  would  have 
found  gods,  impurest  of  the  impure,  served  not  only 
by  human  sacrifice,  but  by  blackest,  vilest  human 
lust.  Religion  was  no  moral  thing  there  in  any 
degree  whatever,  and  where  it  had  power  without 
morality,  its  power  worked  in  the  most  immoral 
way.  Imagine,  then,  the  transcendent  moment  for 
man,  the  moment  of  supremest  promise,  of  grandest 
hope,   when   the    idea   of  a   moral  deity  entered  his 

B 


1 8  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

heart  and  passed  into  his  history,  when  all  the  ener- 
gies of  religion  came  to  be  moral  energies  for  the 
making  of  moral  men.  That  was  a  moment,  I  call  it, 
of  revelation — you  may  call  it  of  supreme  guess-work 
or  grandest  discovery;  or  you  may,  by  magnifying 
incidental  difficulties,  attempt  to  conceal  from  your- 
self its  meaning.  Yet  it  were  only  to  speak  with 
prosaic  soberness  were  we  to  say, — the  moment  when 
gravitation,  navigation,  the  secret  of  the  sea,  of  the 
sun,  or  the  stars,  or  the  earth,  were  discovered  had 
neither  singly  nor  all  combined  equal  nor  even  ap- 
proximate significance  for  man.  Take  from  the 
heart  of  him  this  religion  steeped  in  morality,  made 
living  by  the  moral  character  of  its  God,  and  you  will 
leave  him  without  the  grandest  energy  working  for 
good  and  peace  and  progress  that  ever  came  into  his 
history  or  into  his  heart' 

That  long  quotation  leads  very  naturally  to  the 
second  point  I  wish  to  emphasize.  By  this  law  of 
the  Ten  Words — by  the  character  of  its  precepts,  and 
by  the  supreme  place  given  to  it,  according  to  the 
divine  command,  in  the  nation's  life  and  thought-^ 
God  declared,  in  terms  that  could  not  be  mistaken, 
that  the  end  of  all  His  dealings  with  men  is  righteous- 
ness. '  What  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee  but  to  do 
justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with 
thy  God  ? '  Ceremony,  symbol,  rite — these  have  their 
place,  as  a  hedge  round  about  the  law  to  protect  and 
defend  it,  but  never  as  its  substitute.    '  Righteousness 


INTRODUCTORY  19 

not  ritual !'  is  the  reiterated  cry  of  all  the  great  teachers 
and  prophets  of  Israel ;  wickedness  and  worship  God 
cannot  away  with.  That  grotesque  mingling  of 
moral  and  ceremonial  offences  which  scholars  tell 
us  they  find  so  often  in  the  Egyptian  ritual  of  the 
dead  never  meets  us  in  the  writings  of  the  prophets 
nor  here  in  the  Decalogue.  '  Thus  saith  the  Lord  of 
hosts,  the  God  of  Israel/  cried  the  prophet  Jeremiah, 
*  I  spake  not  unto  your  fathers,  nor  commanded  them 
in  the  day  that  I  brought  them  out  of  the  land  of 
Egypt,  concerning  burnt-offerings  or  sacrifices  :  but 
this  thing  I  commanded  them,  saying,  Hearken  unto 
My  voice  and  I  will  be  your  God,  and  ye  shall  be  My 
people ;  and  walk  ye  in  all  the  way  that  I  command 
you,  that  it  may  be  well  with  you' — that  is  the 
message  v/hich  the  prophets  of  Israel  delivered  as 
with  one  voice. 

And,  let  me  say,  our  study  together  of  this  divine 
law  will  accomplish  but  little  if  it  does  not  serve  to 
stamp  that  same  great  truth  in  sharper  outline  than 
ever  upon  all  our  hearts.  And  if  any  one  is  tempted 
to  grow  impatient,  and  to  dismiss  the  truth  as  one  of 
the  simplest  and  baldest  of  all  religious  common- 
places, let  him  ponder  these  words  of  the  late  Dean 
Church  :  '  There  is  no  strange  self-deceit  more  deeply 
and  obstinately  fixed  in  men's  hearts  than  this :  that 
those  whom  God  favours  may  take  liberties  that  others 
may  not ;  that  religious  men  may  venture  more  safely 
to  transgress  than  others  ;  that  good  men  may  allow 


20  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

themselves  to  do  wrong  things.  There  is  no  more 
certain  fact  in  the  range  of  human  experience  than 
that  with  strong  and  earnest  reHgious  feeUng  there 
may  be  a  feeble  and  imperfect  hold  on  the  moral  law, 
often  a  very  loose  sense  of  justice,  truth,  purity.'  In  all 
the  world's  history  there  is  no  more  mournful  chapter 
than  that  long  and,  alas !  still  unfinished  chapter 
on  the  divorce  of  morality  from  religion.  In  every 
age  men  have  been  ready,  as  some  one  said  of  the 
Jesuits,  to  lengthen  the  creed  and  shorten  the  com- 
mandments, to  tithe  mint  and  anise  and  cummin  and 
neglect  the  weightier  matters  of  the  law.  The  Goths 
of  ancient  Spain,  one  historian  tells  us,  were  indeed 
very  devout,  *  but  they  regarded  their  acts  of  religion 
chiefly  as  reparation  for  their  vices ;  they  compounded 
for  exceptionally  bad  sins  by  an  added  amount  of 
repentance,  and  then  they  sinned  again  without  com- 
punction.' Twelve  centuries  later,  George  Borrow, 
travelling  through  the  same  land,  declared  of  the 
wretched  Jews  of  Lisbon,  that,  though  they  would 
not  partake  of  the  beast  of  the  uncloven  foot  and  the 
fish  which  has  no  scales,  yet  they  broke  the  eternal 
commandments  of  their  Maker  without  scruple.  New- 
man had  a  like  experience  in  the  Morea,  where  he 
found  ruffianly  bandits,  the  terror  of  the  whole  land, 
who  yet,  with  all  their  brutality,  observed  the  fasts  of 
the  Greek  Church  with  the  utmost  strictness.  Ben- 
venuto  Cellini  tells  the  story  of  his  own  life,  in  which 
the  most  pious  sentiments  and  the  grossest  immorality 


INTRODUCTORY  21 

keep  one  another  company  on  the  same  page,  without 
apparently  so  much  as  a  semblance  of  feeling  of 
incongruity.  Nelson  sends  home  despatches  so  re- 
ligious in  their  tone  that  even  Wilberforce  thought 
that  they  would  have  the  effect  of  leading  men  to 
speak  more  of  Providence,  at  the  very  time  that  he 
was  living  in  an  illicit  union  with  another  man's 
wife.  And  who  has  not  heard  of  the  infamous  forger 
of  our  own  day,  who,  fleeing  from  the  hand  of  justice 
to  Madrid,  there  to  perish  miserably  by  his  own 
hand,  was  found  with  the  scapular,  the  symbol  of 
his  religious  faith,  under  his  garments  ? 

It  is  the  old,  sad  story :  '  Thou  bearest  the  name 
of  a  Jew,  and  restest  upon  the  law,  and  gloriest 
in  God,  and  knowest  His  will,  and  approvest  the 
things  that  are  excellent,  and  art  confident  that 
thou  art  thyself  a  guide  of  the  blind,  a  light  of  them 

that  are  in  darkness,  a  corrector  of  the  foolish,  a ' 

yes,  yes,  but — we  know  how  Paul  pricked  that  puff-ball 
of  vain  pretensions — 'thou  that  teachest  another, 
teachest  thou  not  thyself?  thou  that  preachest  a 
man  should  not  steal,  dost  thou  steal?  thou  that 
sayest  a  man  should  not  commit  adultery,  dost  thou 
commit  adultery?  thou  who  gloriest  in  the  law 
through  thy  transgression  of  the  law,  dishonourest 
thou  God?*  It  is  good  to  say,  '  Lord,  Lord,'  to  hear 
His  word,  to  know  and  possess  His  law  ;  but  all 
this  is  nothing,  and  less  than  nothing,  if  it  stand 
alone.      '  The  soul  of  religion  is  the  practick  part ' ; 


22  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

and  it  is  '  he  that  doeth  the  will  of  My  Father  which 
is  in  heaven'  who  shall  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven. 

Once  more  let  us  read  the  familiar  words  before  we 
pass  to  the  precepts  which  follow:  'Arid  God  spake 
all  these  words,  saying,  I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  which 
brought  thee  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  out  of  the  house 
of  bondage'  What  is  this  ?  The  Lord  is  our  Law- 
giver, but  first  of  all  He  is  Redeemer.  How  we  forget 
that !  We  remember  the  blackness  and  darkness 
and  tempest,  the  mount  that  burned  with  fire  and 
the  thunder-smitten  crags  ;  but  we  forget  this  tender, 
gracious  prelude.  Like  words  of  iron  dropped  from 
cold,  stiff  lips  of  stone  the  commandments  seemed  to 
us ;  but  lo  !  by  this  one  word  they  are  softened  and 
transfigured.  Before  God  gave  Israel  the  law,  God 
set  Israel  free.  No  longer  do  His  words  seem  to  us 
as  the  arbitrary  decree  of  a  great  and  terrible  Deity 
whose  fittest  symbol  is  the  fiery  thunder-cloud  ;  they 
are  the  commands  of  Him  who,  with  a  stretched-out 
arm  and  a  strong  right  hand,  saved  His  people  from 
the  oppressor's  yoke.  Behind  God's  law  is  His  love  ; 
Sinai  is  a  foregleam  of  Calvary  ;  the  voice  that  cries, 

*  Thou  shalt  not,'  is  the  voice  of  Him  who  can  say, 

*  I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  which  brought  thee  out  of 
the  land  of  Egypt,  out  of  the  house  of  bondage.' 

Is  not  that  ever  God's  way?  His  first  approach  to 
us  is  not  in  judgment,  but  in  mercy.     *  He  that^'made 


INTRODUCTORY  23 

me  whole,  the  same  said  unto  me ,'  that  is  the 

Divine  order :  first  the  blessing,  afterwards  the  com- 
mand. He  lays  His  yoke  upon  us,  but  first  of  all  He 
establisheth  His  love  towards  us.  Shall  we  not  hear 
and  obey  His  Son,  who  is  alike  the  revelation  of  the 
Father's  love  and  the  Father's  law? 


THE    FIRST    COMMANDMENT 


Thou  shall  have  none  other  gods  before  Me,' — ExODUS  XX.  3. 


THE  FIRST  COMMANDMENT 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  the  two  great 
ideas  around  which  the  various  precepts  of  the 
Decalogue  revolve  are  these,  God  and  duty.  The 
commandments  of  the  first  table  establish  the  truth 
concerning  God,  and  man's  relation  to  Him  ;  those 
of  the  second  table,  the  duty  of  man  to  his  fellow- 
man.  We  begin  to-day  the  consideration  of  the 
former. 


And  I  ask  you  to  observe,  at  the  outset,  that  the 
first  word  of  a  law  whose  end  is  righteousness,  is  GoD. 
That  is  the  starting-point  alike  of  religion  and 
morality.  The  first  essential  of  all  true  thinking  and 
right  living  is  a  right  thought  of  God.  Who  is  God  ? 
what  is  His  character?  what  are  His  claims  upon  us? 
by  what  name  shall  we  name  Him  ?  To  be  wrong- 
there  is  to  be  wrong  radically  ;  it  is  to  have  the  stream 
poisoned  at  the  fountain-head.  *  I  am  the  Lord  thy 
God ' — so  begins  the  Decalogue,  '  Master,'  said  one 
to  Christ,  *  which  is  the  great  commandment  in  the 

2? 


28  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

law  ? '  And  Jesus  said  unto  him,  '  Thou  shalt  love 
the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy 
soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind.  This  is  the  great  and 
first  commandment'  Therefore  do  Moses  and  Christ 
alike  declare  that  to  be  right  practically  we  must  be 
right  theologically,  to  be  right  manward  we  must  be 
right  Godward. 

But  nowadays  men  often  say,  '  Let  us  give  heed 
to  the  Second  Commandment ;  never  mind  the  First. 
All  that  is  written  upon  the  second  table  of  the  law 
will  we  do ;  as  for  the  rest,  it  matters  not.  God  we 
do  not  know,  and  cannot  be  sure  of;  let  us  love  and 
be  kind  one  to  another ;  what  else  can  be  required  of 
us  ? '  Some  few  years  ago  a  great  controversy  was 
waged  in  the  pages  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  between 
Mr.  Gladstone  and  Professor  Huxley  on  certain 
matters  touching  Religion  and  Science.  The  con- 
troversy is  now  well-nigh  forgotten,  as  indeed  it 
deserves  to  be,  and  I  only  refer  to  it  in  order  to  quote 
one  very  striking  passage  from  the  pen  of  the 
Professor:  'In  the  eighth  century  B.C.,'  he  says,  *  in 
the  heart  of  a  world  of  idolatrous  polytheists,  the 
Hebrew  prophets  put  forth  a  conception  of  religion 
which  appears  to  me  to  be  as  wonderful  an  inspiration 
of  genius  as  the  art  of  Phidias  or  the  science  of 
Aristotle :  "  And  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee 
but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk 
humbly  with  thy  God  ?  "  If  any  so-called  religion 
takes  away  from  this  great  saying  of  Micah,  I  think 


THE   FIRST   COMMANDMENT  29 

it  wantonly  mutilates,  while,  if  it  adds  thereto,  I 
think  it  obscures  the  perfect  ideal  of  religion.' 

Now,  if  Professor  Huxley  had  accepted  all  that  is 
involved  in  any  fair  interpretation  of  the  great  passage 
which  he  quotes,  our  controversy  with  him  might  have 
been  at  an  end  long  ago.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
was  it  not  he  himself  who  '  mutilated'  it?  Nay,  did 
he  not  tear  out  the  very  heart  of  it  ?  For  did  he  not 
assure  us  again  and  again  that  no  man  knows,  or  can 
know,  whether  or  not  there  be  a  God  who  requires 
anything  at  our  hand,  with  whom  we  may  walk, 
humbly  or  otherwise  ?  Huxley  in  reality  cut  down 
Micah's  words  to  this,  'Do  justly  and  love  mercy.' 
But  that,  certainly,  was  not  the  prophet's  ideal ;  we 
may  doubt  if  alone  it  would  long  be  the  ideal  of  any 
people.  What  guarantee  have  we  that  man  will 
continue  to  '  do  justly  and  love  mercy,'  or  even  that 
he  will  continue  to  make  these  moral  distinctions  at 
all  when  once  he  has  ceased  to  believe  in  a  God  of 
whose  will  they  are  the  expression. 

I  cannot  discuss  the  point  further  now ;  but  if  any 
young  man  is  tempted  to  think  that  '  Christ's  second 
commandment'  is  enough,  that  it  matters  little 
whether  we  hold  any  religious  belief  at  all  or  not, 
and  that,  whatever  happens,  we  may  still  remain  in 
full  and  undisturbed  possession  of  our  great  moral 
inheritance,  let  him  turn  to  the  first  chapter  of 
Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour's  Foundations  of  Belief,  or  to  the 
second  of  Professor  Pfleiderer's  Gifford  Lectures — no 


30  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

'narrow-minded  theologians'  these,  surely — and  he 
will  at  least  find  enough  to  give  him  pause.  But  it  is 
needless  to  go  into  the  matter  further,  because  though 
an  individual  here  and  there  may  have  thrown  off  all 
belief  in  the  existence  of  God,  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  mankind  still  continue  theists  of  one  kind 
or  another.  Man  will  not,  cannot,  sever  his  corre- 
spondence with  the  Unseen.  His  deity  may  be  cruel 
as  Moloch,  lustful  as  Baal ;  but  a  deity  of  some  sort 
he  must  have  ;  the  soul  insists  on  an  outlook  heaven- 
ward, Godward.  All  history  bears  testimony  to  that. 
The  very  idolatry  which  this  commandment  forbids 
is  the  strongest  proof  of  it.  For  a  day  men  may 
succeed  in  persuading  us  that  an  iron  Materialism  has 
spoken  the  last  word  concerning  the  universe ;  but 
the  reaction  is  certain  to  come — as  we  have  seen  it 
come  in  our  day — and  then,  in  one  form  or  another, 
and  sometimes  in  the  wildest  extravagances  of 
superstitious  folly,  man's  innate,  indestructible  faith 
in  the  supernatural  reasserts  itself. 

Some  thought  of  God,  then,  and  of  his  relation  to 
God — some  '  theology,'  that  is — man  will  fashion  for 
himself;  some  worship  he  will  offer.  And  as  are 
these  things,  so  is  a  nation's  life ;  by  them  is  its 
character  moulded.  '  No  nation,'  says  Principal 
Fairbairn,  '  is  ever  better  than  its  conception  of  God. 
Where  God  is  badly  conceived,  the  laws  and  manners 
of  the  people  are  sure  to  be  bad ;  where  He  is 
nobly  thought  of,  the  ideal  of  the  people  will  also 


THE   FIRST   COMMANDMENT  3 1 

be  noble,  their  history  a  struggle  towards  higher 
excellence.' 

And  this  is  the  point  at  which  God  first  meets  His 
chosen  people :  not  with  a  demonstration  of  His 
existence — for  that  there  was  no  need — but  with  a 
revelation,  albeit  a  partial  revelation,  of  His  character. 
First  of  all  the  Jew  must  be  taught  the  true  idea 
of  God. 

The  revelation,  I  say,  was  'partial,'  and  at  this 
stage  inevitably  so.  When  can  you  tell  the  whole 
truth  on  any  great  matter  to  a  child  ?  You  must  be 
content  to  speak  by  hint,  parable,  suggestion.  And 
as  yet  Israel  was  but  a  child,  and  must  be  treated  so. 
Only  in  certain  aspects  of  it  could  the  truth  concerning 
God  be  made  known  ;  not  till  the  '  fulness  of  time ' 
had  come  could  the  full  revelation  be  given  or 
received.  Do  I  speak  too  strongly  when  I  say  that 
five-sixths  of  the  so-called  'Old  Testament  difficulties ' 
of  which  we  have  heard  so  much  owe  their  existence 
to  forgetfulness  of  that  elementary  truth?  But 
though  the  whole  truth  could  not  yet  be  told,  one 
lesson  at  least  Israel  must  learn  straightway,  and  this 

the  First  Commandment  was  given  to  make  plain 

Jehovah  is  supreme,  solitary,  sovereign :  '  Thou  shalt 
have  none  other  gods  before  Me' 

Did  this  command,  it  has  often  been  asked,  involve 
what  is  called  an  '  absolute  monotheism  '  ?  *  I  am  the 
Lord,  and  there  is  none  else  ;  beside  Me  there  is  no 
God ' :  so  did   Jehovah  speak  by  the  mouth  of  the 


32  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

great  prophet  of  the  Exile.  Was  it  thus  that  the 
children  of  Israel  understood  this  first  word  spoken 
from  Sinai  ?  It  does  not  seem  to  me  necessary  to 
insist  on  that  interpretation.  Monotheism  is  implicit 
rather  than  explicit  in  the  commandment,  which  does 
not  in  so  many  words  declare  that  there  is  but  one 
God.  As  to  the  deities  of  Egypt,  or  Canaan,  or  other 
lands,  nothing  is  said  of  them ;  they  are  simply 
passed  over  in  silence  ;  and  at  first,  at  any  rate,  Israel 
would  not  hear  in  the  commandment  any  condemna- 
tion of  them.  But  what  this  law  did  unmistakably 
mean  was  that  for  Israel  there  is  but  one  God, 
Jehovah  ;  whatever  other  nations  might  do,  Him  only 
must  they  serve.  And  when  Israel  had  learned  that 
lesson,  the  seed  had  begun  to  germinate  from  which 
was  ultimately  to  spring  the  pure  monotheism  of  Jew 
and  Gentile  alike. 


II 

The  Lord  is  sovereign,  supreme ;  this,  I  say,  was 
the  truth  which,  first  of  all,  Israel  must  learn.  And 
the  truth  was  taught  in  two  ways  : — 

(i)  First,  by  the  new  name  under  which  God  made 
Himself  known,  the  name  of  '  Jehovah.'  What  did 
this  name  signify  ?  Without  attempting  to  cut  our 
way  through  the  tangled  thickets  of  controversy 
which  have  sprung  up  about  the  word,  this  at  least 
seems  clear  :  that  it  is  derived  from  the  old  Hebrew 


THE   FIRST   COMMANDMENT  33 

verb  '  to  be,'  and  that  it  has  one  of  two  possible  mean- 
ings, either  '  He  who  is '  or  '  He  who  causes  to  be.' 
What  idea,  then,  do  we  get  of  Him  who  proclaims 
Himself  by  this  name?  That  He  alone  is,  uncreated 
and  uncaused,  alone  He  exists  of  Himself,  the 
eternal  source  of  all  that  is.  I  do  not  mean  that  this, 
and  all  that  lay  involved  in  it,  was  fully  grasped  by 
Israel  at  Sinai ;  but  who  does  not  see  the  significance 
of  a  name  like  this  given  to  a  people  situated  as  the 
people  of  Israel  then  were  ?  They  had  just  escaped 
out  of  Egypt  into  Canaan.  With  the  whole  life  of 
the  inhabitants  of  both  these  lands  polytheism  was 
inextricably  intertwined.  In  Egypt,  whence  they 
had  but  just  come,  men  worshipped  the  sun,  the  moon 
and  the  stars,  even  the  river  and  the  soil.  Now  by 
one  word  the  falsehood  of  it  all  is  laid  bare :  *  /  am 
Jehovah'  These  that  men  ignorantly  worship  are 
but  created  things  ;  the  Lord  is  their  creator ;  He  is 
God  alone  ;  Him  only  shall  ye  serve. 

(2)  But  the  revelation  of  Divine  sovereignty  was 
not  limited  by  the  new  Divine  name,  great  as  that 
was.  Long  generations  must  pass  before  the  whole 
truth,  of  which  that  name  was  the  channel,  could 
sink  into  the  minds  of  the  children  of  Israel.  Mean- 
while, something  more  definite  and  palpable  was 
needed,  something  that  would  strike  the  imagination 
and  make  its  appeal,  vividly  and  immediately,  to 
the  whole  people.  And  where  should  that  needed 
something  be  found  if  not  in  their  own  past  history  ? 

C 


34  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

Herein  lies  the  significance  of  the  reference  in  the 
words  which  stand  as  a  preface  to  the  Decalogue : 
'  I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  which  brought  tJiee  out  of 
the  land  of  Egypt,  out  of  the  house  of  bondage!  God 
did  not  seek  to  convince  Israel  by  abstract  reason- 
ings that  He  was  the  supreme  One  ;  He  manifested 
Himself  before  their  eyes  as  supreme.  He  over- 
whelmed the  false  deities  of  Egypt  with  confusion  ; 
He  brought  to  naught  the  might  of  Pharaoh  and 
all  his  host ;  He  made  them  to  be  a  people  who 
before  were  not  a  people  ;  and  then,  when  the  evi- 
dences of  His  mighty  working  were  manifest  before 
them  all,  He  gave  them  His  law,  saying,  '  Thou  shalt 
have  none  other  gods  before  Me.'  When  Authority 
clothes  itself  in  love  like  this,  who  shall  say  it  nay  ? 
The  slain  Lamb  in  the  midst  of  the  throne  who  can 
withstand  ?  There  is  no  sovereignty  like  the  sove- 
reignty of  grace.  *  I  am  the  Lord  thy  God,  which 
brought  thee  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt,  out  of  the 
house  of  bondage.' 

Yet  the  truth  was  grasped  but  slowly.  Israel's 
history  is  marked  by  the  saddest  and  strangest  lapses 
into  idolatry.  In  spite  of  the  warnings  of  the  pro- 
phets, and  the  continual  suffering  which  their  way- 
wardness brought  upon  them,  the  people  turned 
again  and  again,  with  almost  unaccountable  per- 
versity, to  seek  after  strange  gods.  But  He  who 
brought  them  out  of  Egypt  bore  long  with  them, 
and  taught  them,   till   at  last  the  truth   first  given 


THE   FIRST   COMMANDMENT  35 

at  Sinai  became  one  of  the  priceless  and  inalienable 
possessions  of  the  race:  *The  Lord  our  God  is  one 
God  ;  Him  only  shalt  thou  serve.' 


Ill 

But  what  does  this  First  Commandment  say  to  us 
to-day?  Has  it  anything  to  say  at  all?  We  know 
that  an  idol  is  nothing  in  the  world,  that  there  is  no 
God  but  one ;  and  though  there  be  that  are  called 
gods,  yet  to  us  there  is  but  one  God,  the  Father,  of 
whom  are  all  things.  What  need,  then,  to  proclaim 
in  our  ears  to-day,  *  Thou  shalt  have  none  other  gods 
before  Me '  ? 

But  are  these  things  really  so  ?  We  read  that  as 
Paul  passed  through  the  streets  of  Athens,  '  his  spirit 
was  provoked  within  him  as  he  beheld  the  city  full  of 
idols,'  If  he  could  pass  through  the  streets  of  our 
cities  to-day,  would  he  find  no  idol-worship,  think 
you,  to  stir  his  spirit  within  him  ?  Most  of  us, 
perhaps,  have  never  seen  an  idol  in  our  life,  unless  it 
was  in  a  museum  or  at  a  missionary  meeting.  Are 
there,  therefore,  no  idolaters  among  us  ?  Has  St. 
John's  exhortation,  '  Little  children,  guard  yourselves 
from  idols,'  lost  all  its  point  and  meaning  for  us? 
When  a  great  preacher  took  for  his  subject  the 
other  day,  '  The  Idolatry  of  Civilized  Men,'  was  he 
the  victim  of  a  strange  delusion  ?  Do  not  let  us 
deceive  ourselves  with  words.     Idolatry  is  an  affair 


$6  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

of  the  heart.  That  which  we  lean  on,  that  to  which 
we  give  our  best,  that  which  enchains  our  heart — that 
is  our  god.  *  A  man's  true  worship  is  not  the  worship 
which  he  performs  in  the  pubHc  temple,  but  that 
which  he  offers  down  in  that  little  private  chapel 
where  nobody  goes  but  himself  And  if  there  '  we 
have  forgotten  the  name  of  our  God,  and  spread 
forth  our  hands  to  a  strange  god,  shall  not  God 
search  this  out?  For  He  knoweth  the  secrets  of 
the  heart.'  'This  people  honoureth  me  with  their 
lips ' :  every  week  in  God's  house  that  is  what'  we 
do.  But  if  He  who  knoweth  the  secrets  of  the 
heart  search  us  out,  what  shall  He  find  ?  Will  He 
say  of  us,  *  Their  heart  is  far  from  Me,'  because 
we  have  chosen  some  other  god  before  Him  ? 

Idolatry  dead  ?  The  First  Commandment  out  of 
date  ?  Alas,  alas !  no ;  never  was  the  worship  of 
the  true  God  in  such  peril  of  being  choked  with 
the  deceitfulness  of  idols  as  at  this  very  moment 
in  Christian  England.  We  never  broke  the  First 
Commandment?  Then  what  of  the  Tenth?  And 
covetousness  is  idolatry.  Do  we  not  still,  as  in  the 
days  of  Habakkuk  the  prophet,  'sacrifice  unto  our 
net  and  burn  incense  unto  our  drag,  because  by  them 
our  portion  is  fat  and  our  meat  plenteous?'  Is  not 
Paul's  terrible  indictment  still  true  of  multitudes 
of  us — we  mind  earthly  things,  our  god  is  our  belly  ? 
Would  the  Bedford  tinker  need  to  seek  far  to  find 
his  man  that  could  look  no  way  but  downward,  with 


THE   FIRST   COMMANDMENT  37 

the  muck-rake  in  his  hand  ?  One  still  stands  over  us 
with  a  celestial  crown  in  his  hand,  and  proffers  to 
give  us  that  crown  for  our  muck-rake  ;  but  still  we  do 
neither  look  up  nor  regard,  but  rake  to  ourselves  the 
straws,  the  small  sticks,  and  dust  of  the  floor.  In  all 
our  thoughts  God  is  not,  but  instead  the  greed  of  the 
Mammon-worshipper,  the  narrowing  lust  of  gold,  the 
unholy  passion  of  the  sensualist,  all  the  petty  vanities 
and  sordid  ambitions  of  them  that  every  hour  of  the 
day  and  every  day  of  the  week  crowd  into  the  temple 
and  grovel  before  the  altar  of  the  god  of  this  world. 

'Thou  shalt  have  none  other  gods  before  Me';  and 
as  surely  as  men  forget  that  to-day,  so  surely  shall 
the  warnings  of  the  prophets  of  old  fulfil  themselves 
in  our  ears.  Every  word  they  speak  concerning  the 
folly  and  futility  of  the  idolatry  of  the  past  has  an 
application,  not  less  pointed,  to  the  idolatry  of  the 
present.  '  One  shall  cry  unto  [his  god\  yet  can  Jie  not 
answer^  nor  save  him  out  of  his  trouble '  :  is  it  not  so 
still?  What  can  our  gods  do  for  us  when  we  are 
brought  low,  or  in  the  dark  and  sore  abasement 
of  death  ?  '  In  that  day  a  man  shall  cast  away  his  idols 
of  silver  and  his  idols  of  gold,  which  they  made  for  him 
to  worship,  to  the  moles  and  to  the  bats ' :  have  we  not 
seen  that  also,  when  men  in  weariness  and  disappoint- 
ment have  turned  from  their  idols,  it  may  be  to  seek 
after  other  gods  to  their  hurt,  it  may  be  to  seek  after 
a  true  and  living  God  to  their  salvation  ?  '  They  that 
make  them  shall  be  like  unto  them  ;  yea,  every  one  that 


38  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

trusieth  in  tJicin ' :  is  it  not  always  so  ?  Our  gods 
cannot  lift  us  beyond  ourselves  ;  men  follow  their 
gaze  ;  they  grow  like  that  they  live  for.  '  A/za^  sac- 
rificed unto  the  gods  of  Damascus,  saying,  I  will 
sacrifice  to  them  that  they  may  help  vie,  but  they  were 
the  ruin  of  him  and  all  IsraeV  \  God  open  our  eyes 
in  time,  lest  we  also  perish  in  like  manner ! 

But  mayhap  we  are  attempting  a  compromise. 
Like  the  Jews,  who  never  wholly  cast  off  Jehovah, 
but  thought  they  might  give  Him  a  divided  alle- 
giance ;  like  the  Roman  Emperor,  who  had  a  statue 
of  Jesus  and  a  statue  of  Plato  side  by  side  in  his 
pantheon,  so  we  set  up  our  little  row  of  deities.  To 
each  we  yield  homage  in  its  turn.  To-day,  the 
Sabbath,  is  saved  for  Jehovah  ;  to-morrow,  Mammon 
— or  worse — is  our  choice.  I  tell  you — no,  not  I,  He 
tells  you — nay !  The  Lord  is  a  jealous  God  ;  He 
will  brook  no  rival ;  He  will  share  His  throne  with 
none  ;  He  will  be  all  in  all,  or  He  will  be  nothing. 
Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  Mammon.  Him  only 
shalt  thou  serve.  Oh!  let  us  take  Him  this  day 
to  be  the  Lord  our  God,  let  us  yield  ourselves  to 
Him ;  and  when  again  He  speaks  and  says,  '  Thou 
shalt  have  none  other  gods  before  Me,'  let  us  make 
answer  to  Him,  '  Lord,  have  mercy  upon  us,  and 
incline  our  hearts  to  keep  this  law.' 


THE   SECOND    COMMANDMENT 


'  Thou  shalt  not  make  unto  thee  a  graven  image,  nor  the  likeness  of 
any  form  that  is  in  heaven  above,  or  that  is  in  the  earth  beneath,  or 
that  is  in  the  water  under  the  earth  :  thou  shalt  not  bow  down  thyself 
unto  them,  nor  serve  them:  for  I  the  Lord  thy  God  am  a  jealous  God, 
visiting  the  iniquity  of  the  fathers  upon  the  children,  upon  the  third  and 
upon  the  fourth  generation  of  them  that  hate  Me  ;  and  shewing  mercy 
unto  thousands  of  them  that  love  Me  and  keep  My  commandments.' — 
Exodus  xx.  4,  5,  6. 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT 

Let  us  begin  by  endeavouring  to  understand  what 
the  commandment  means.  Why  was  it  given,  and 
what  exactly  is  it  that  by  it  is  forbidden  ? 


I 

(i)  And,  in  the  first  place,  how  is  this  Second 
Commandment  related  to,  and  how  does  it  differ 
from,  the  First?  To  many  the  distinction  is  by  no 
means  obvious.  More  than  once  it  has  been  said — 
Are  not  the  two  commandments  really  one?  *  Thou 
shalt  have  none  other  gods  before  Me ' — that  forbids 
idolatry.  '  Thou  shalt  not  make  unto  thee  a  graven 
image,  nor  the  likeness  of  any  form  that  is  in  heaven 
above,  or  that  is  in  the  earth  beneath,  or  that  is  in  the 
water  under  the  earth :  thou  shalt  not  bow  down  thy- 
self unto  them,  nor  serve  them ' — what  is  this  but  the 
prohibition  of  idolatry  over  again  ? 

But  this  word  'idolatry'  has  two  quite  distinct  mean- 
ings. Sometimes  it  signifies  the  worship  of  false  gods ; 
and  when  men  bow  down  to  the  sun,  the  moon,  or  the 
stars,  we  call  them  '  idolaters.'     That  is  the  sin  which 

41 


42  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

is  forbidden  by  the  First  Commandment  But  that 
is  not  the  only  meaning  of  the  term.  We  speak  of 
the  *  idolatry '  of  the  children  of  Israel,  when  in  the 
wilderness  they  worshipped  the  golden  calf  which 
Aaron  made  for  them.  Yet  they  had  not  broken  the 
First  Commandment ;  the  calf  was  not  to  them  in 
the  place  of  God  ;  it  was  meant  merely  as  the  symbol 
of  the  unseen  Jehovah.  We  are  distinctly  told  that 
when  the  image  was  made,  Aaron  *  made  a  proclama- 
tion and  said.  To-morrow  shall  be  a  feast  to  the 
Lord'  Why  then  was  God  angry  with  the  children 
of  Israel,  and  why  did  He  visit  them  with  such  sore 
punishment  ?  Because  they  had  worshipped  the  true 
God  under  a  false  and  forbidden  form  :  they  had  kept 
the  First,  but  they  had  broken  the  Second  Com- 
mandment. So  likewise  did  Jeroboam  sin  when, 
after  the  revolt  of  the  tribes  and  the  division  of  the 
kingdom,  he  set  up  the  two  calves  of  gold — one  at 
Bethel  and  one  at  Dan — as  representatives  of  the 
God  who  was  worshipped  at  Jerusalem.  Ahab,  on 
the  other  hand,  'as  if  it  had  been  a  light  thing 
for  him  to  walk  in  the  sins  of  Jeroboam  .  .  .  went 
and  served  Baal  and  worshipped  him.  And  he 
reared  up  an  altar  for  Baal,  in  the  house  of  Baal, 
which  he  had  built  in  Samaria,'  so  setting  at  naught 
the  First  Commandment. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  two  offences  are  closely 
allied,  a  breach  of  the  Second  Commandment  readily 
preparing   the   way    for   disobedience   to   the    First. 


THE   SECOND    COMMANDMENT  43 

Nevertheless  the  distinction  is  clear :  the  First 
Commandment  declares  whom  we  shall  worship,  the 
Second,  how ;  the  First  says  Jehovah  must  be 
worshipped  exclusively^  the  Second  that  He  must  be 
worshipped  spiritually ;  the  First  stands  for  the  unity, 
the  Second  for  the  spirituality  of  God.  The  Second 
Commandment  is,  indeed,  an  early  form  of  the  great 
truth  afterwards  published  by  Jesus  Christ :  '  God  is 
a  Spirit :  and  they  that  worship  Him,  must  worship 
in  spirit  and  truth.' 

(2)  Did  the  commandment  make  unlawful  the 
cultivation  of  the  arts  of  sculpture  and  painting? 
So  it  has  been  sometimes  said,  and  the  absence  of 
works  of  art  among  the  Jewish  people  has  been 
pointed  to  in  proof  It  may  be  readily  granted  that 
the  Jews  were  not  an  artistic  race ;  in  that  respect 
they  stand  in  striking  contrast  to  the  great  nations 
by  which  they  were  surrounded.  It  may  also  be 
admitted  that,  whatever  artistic  instincts  they  may 
have  possessed  were  in  some  degree  checked  by  this 
commandment,  as  a  similar  interdiction  in  the  Koran 
is  said  to  have  produced  a  similar  effect  among  the 
Arab  tribes.^  On  the  other  hand,  even  from  the  point 
of  view  of  art  itself,  a  plea  may  be  put  in  on  behalf 
of  the  iconoclast.  Because  of  his  loftier  vision  of 
God,  '  he  has,  on  the  whole,  more  really  furthered  the 
progress  of  art  than  the  artist  whose  work  he  has 

^  Kalisch,  quoted  in  Dr.  Whyte's  Conunentary  on  Ihe  Shorter 
Caiechisiti. 


44  THE  TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

destroyed.'  Who,  e.g.,  would  exchange  the  beauties 
of  a  prophecy  like  that  of  Isaiah  xl.  for  all  the  beauty 
of  all  the  idols  of  Babylon  which  it  consigned  to  de- 
struction ?  1  And  still  further,  let  it  be  remembered 
that  if  the  Hebrews  contributed  little  to  art,  it  was  in 
the  main  because  their  whole  strength  was  devoted 
to  still  higher  and  greater  interests.  In  the  Divine 
economy  of  nations,  if  Greece  stands  for  art,  and 
Rome  for  law,  it  is  to  Judaea  that  we  look  as  the 
birthplace  and  home  of  religion. 

At  the  same  time,  a  fair  interpretation  of  all  the 
facts  lends  little  support  to  the  idea  that  this  com- 
mandment was  understood  by  the  Jews  as  an  absolute 
prohibition  of  the  plastic  arts.  Such  a  law,  it  has 
been  truly  said,  could  not  possibly  have  emanated 
from  a  legislator  who  ordered  a  holy  tent,  furnished 
with  all  adornments  of  art  and  beauty,  and  who  even 
ordered  two  cherubim  to  be  placed  within  the  Holy 
of  Holies.  The  first  part  of  the  commandment, '  Thou 
shalt  not  make  unto  thee  a  graven  image,'  must 
be  read  in  the  light  of  the  latter,  'Thou  shalt  not 
bow  down  thyself  unto  them,  nor  serve  them.'  It 
was  not  the  making  of  an  image,  but  the  making  of  it 
for  purposes  of  worship,  not  the  use  of  it,  but  the 
unlawful  use,  that  the  commandment  forbade. 

(3)  One  further  question  remains  to  be  briefly 
answered.      Why  was  such  a  commandment  given 

1  See  George  Adam  Smith's  Isaiah,  vol.  ii.,  from  whicli  these  two 
sentences  are  taken. 


THE   SECOND   COMMANDMENT  45 

at  all  ?  The  reason  of  the  First  Commandment  needs 
no  demonstration ;  the  evils  of  polytheism  are  patent 
to  all.  But  why  were  the  Jews  forbidden  to  make 
to  themselves  symbols  of  their  Deity  ?  Why  should 
not  a  man  be  allowed  some  visible,  material  emblem, 
not  that  he  may  worship  it,  but  that  he  may  the 
better  worship  the  unseen  Jehovah,  whose  emblem  it 
is?  God  Himself  is  great,  distant,  impalpable  ;  why 
should  I  be  denied  the  use  of  that  which  might  bring 
Him  near  to  me,  and  help  me  to  draw  near  to  Him  ? 
The  reasoning  sounds  plausible  ;  yet  it  was  this  very 
thing  that  Jehovah  sternly  forbade.  Nor  is  it  diffi- 
cult to  understand  why. 

All  symbols  tend  to  usurp  the  place  of  God  Him- 
self Theoretically,  it  is  true,  men  do  not  worship 
the  material  emblem.  But  all  experience  shows  that 
as  men  put  their  trust  in  symbols,  God  is  robbed  of 
His  due.  The  symbol  is  always  on  the  way  to  being 
a  fetish.  Beginning  by  being  only  a  medium  through 
which  the  Eternal  may  be  more  easily  apprehended, 
it  ends  by  intercepting  and  securing  for  itself  that 
which  belongs  to  God  alone.  It  was  exactly  this 
that  had  happened,  as  Principal  Fairbairn  tells  us, 
in  the  land  from  which  the  children  of  Israel  had  just 
come.  *  In  Egypt,'  he  says,  '  the  symbolism  had 
swallowed  up  all  the  spirituality  of  the  religion.  .  .  . 
The  Deity  was  hidden  by  the  symbols  ;  the  symbols 
were  adored  as  Deity.'  It  was  exactly  this,  too, 
which  came  to  pass  among  the   Israelites  themselves, 


46  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

when,  in  the  days  of  Hezekiah,  they  burned  incense 
to  the  brazen  serpent,  the  symbol  of  a  great  Divine 
deliverance  in  the  wilderness.  Dr.  Dale  tells  us  that 
he  learned  to  understand  the  growth  of  this  kind 
of  idolatry  by  observing  the  gradual  clustering  of 
superstitious  sentin:ients  around  an  engraving  of  our 
Lord  which  he  had  over  his  mantelpiece  in  his 
college  days.  It  is  the  universal  testimony :  the 
visible  symbol,  which  is  at  first  nothing,  is  at  last 
identified  with  God  Himself 

And  again,  symbolism  tends  to  degrade  our  con- 
ception of  God.  The  calf-worship  of  which  we  read 
so  much  in  the  Old  Testament  was  fatal,  inevitably 
fatal,  to  the  purity  of  the  worship  of  Jehovah.  In 
the  mind  of  every  worshipper  a  twofold  tendency  is 
at  work — to  lift  the  symbol  to  the  place  of  God,  to 
bring  God  down  to  the  level  of  the  symbol.  What 
Paul  saw  at  Athens  happens  always  when  men  are 
given  over  to  idolatry :  they  think  that  '  the  Godhead 
is  like  unto  gold,  or  silver,  or  stone,  graven  by  art  and 
device  of  man,'  No  idol,  be  it  of  priceless  material 
worth,  or  only  some  rudely  carved  block  of  wood  or 
stone,  can  be  a  true  representation  of  God.  To  bow 
down  before  it  is  to  cut  the  wings  of  the  spirit ;  it  is 
to  fetter  and  cramp  our  thoughts  of  God,  and  to 
leave  us  earth-bound  and  material. 

But  though  the  children  of  Israel  were  thus  for- 
bidden to  make  unto  them  any  graven  image,  the 
instinct  that  sought  after  a  God  nigh  at  hand  and 


THE   SECOND   COMMANDMENT  47 

not  afar  off,  a  God  who  could  be  seen  and  heard  and 
handled,  remained  in  unweakened  force.  And  at  last 
the  instinct  was  met  and  satisfied  in  the  Incarnation. 
'  In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the  Word  was 
with  God,  and  the  Word  was  God.  .  .  .  And  the 
Word  became  flesh,  and  dwelt  among  us ' ;  and  a 
mortal  man  could  write,  '  That  which  was  from  the 
beginning,  that  which  we  have  heard,  that  which  we 
have  seen  with  our  eyes,  that  which  we  beheld,  and 
our  hands  handled,  concerning  the  Word  of  life  .  .  . 
declare  we  unto  you.'  He  who  dwelleth  in  the  light 
unapproachable,  whom  no  man  hath  seen  nor  can  see, 
He  who  said,  'Thou  shalt  not  make  unto  thee  a  graven 
image,'  sent  forth  His  Son,  'the  effulgence  of  His 
glory,  and  the  impress  of  His  substance,'  that  in  Him 
all  men  may  behold  '  the  image  of  the  invisible  God.' 


II 

The  Second  Commandment  stands,  I  repeat,  for 
the  spirituality  of  worship.  It  is  the  denial  of 
materialism  in  religion,  of  the  need  of  man-made 
intermediaries  in  our  approach  to  God.  It  bids  us 
put  our  trust  not  in  symbols,  but  in  Him,  and  seek 
the  quickening  of  our  religious  emotions,  not  through 
the  cunning  appeals  of  a  sensuous  ritualism,  but  by 
listening  to  the  revelation  of  Himself  which  He  has 
given  us.  Is  there  anything  in  our  life  to-day  which 
makes  necessary  the  repetition  and  emphasis  of  this 


48  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

truth  ?  There  is.  We  are  face  to  face  at  the  present 
moment  with  a  portentous  revival  of  religious 
materialism  which,  under  the  name  of  '  Ritualism,' 
threatens  to  wither  to  its  root  this  great  doctrine  of 
the  spirituality  of  worship.  In  Scotland  happily  as 
yet  we  know  little  of  this  movement.  But  south  of 
the  Tweed  a  deliberate  and  determined  attempt  is 
being  made,  in  the  name  of  culture,  art,  and  religion, 
to  reintroduce  that  elaborate  and  cumbrous  ceremonial 
system,  which,  three  centuries  ago,  had  well-nigh 
smothered  the  life  of  religion  out  of  it,  and  from 
which  we  used  fondly  to  hope  the  Reformation  had 
freed  us  for  ever.  And  meanwhile,  in  the  great 
Anglican  Church,  the  movement  is  carrying  every- 
thing before  it.  It  was  no  prejudiced  Nonconformist, 
but  Dean  Farrar  himself,  who  two  or  three  years  ago 
declared,  in  the  pages  of  one  of  our  leading  reviews, 
that  '  in  twenty  years,  if  things  are  suffered  to  go  on 
at  their  present  rate,  the  Church  of  England  will  have 
become  Romish  in  everything  but  name.'  Without 
making  any  attempt  to  state  the  whole  case  against 
Ritualism,  let  me  briefly  mention  one  or  two  general 
principles  upon  which  we  base  our  protest. 

We  are  not  Ritualists ;  neither  are  we  Quakers  ; 
and  though  we  may  believe,  as  I  do  myself,  that  the 
ideal  of  the  Quaker  is  immeasurably  nearer  the  true 
ideal  of  worship  than  that  of  the  High  Churchman, 
yet  we  cannot  go  to  the  extreme  of  the  former  in 
his    rejection    of  all  rites  and  ordinances.     So  long 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT  49 

as  human  nature  is  what  it  is,  with  its  dependence 
upon  the  material  and  the  symbolic,  and  its  need  of 
visible  forms  to  aid  the  dulness  of  its  spiritual  percep- 
tions, so  long  will  ritual  continue  to  fill  its  place  and 
discharge  its  function  in  religious  worship.  But — and 
here  we  join  hands  with  the  Quaker — that  place  is 
an  entirely  subordinate  one.  Ritual  is  a  means  to  an 
end,  not  an  end  in  itself ;  it  is  a  ladder  up  the  steps 
of  which  the  soul  may  climb  to  God  ;  it  is  as  the  bit 
of  coloured  glass  which  the  astronomer  uses  to  enable 
him  to  gaze  upon  the  sun.  But  if  the  rite  do  not 
take  us  past  itself,  if  the  soul  linger  upon  the  steps  of 
the  ladder,  if  the  eye  do  not  get  beyond  the  coloured 
glass,  if  the  seen  and  temporal  emblem  do  not  lift  our 
thoughts  to  the  unseen  and  eternal  reality,  it  has 
missed  the  whole  purpose  of  its  existence ;  it  is  not 
only  not  helping  us,  it  is  hindering  and  hurting  us.  And 
that,  as  all  experience  shows,  is  what  always  happens 
whenever  ritual  is  exalted  beyond  its  rightful  place: 
religion  is  vulgarized  and  materialized.  '  Enlisting 
the  senses  as  the  allies  of  the  spirit,'  says  Dr.  Mac- 
laren,  '  is  risky  work.  They  are  very  apt  to  fight  for 
their  own  hand  when  they  once  begin,  and  the  history 
of  all  symbolical  and  ceremonial  worship  shows  that 
the  experiment  is  much  more  likely  to  end  in  sen- 
sualizing religion  than  in  spiritualizing  sense.'  Open 
your  eyes  and  see  if  this  is  not  precisely  what  is 
going  on  in  our  midst  to-day.     I  have  quoted  before^ 

^  See  the  author's  First  Things  First,  p.  199. 
D 


50  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

some  very  remarkable  statistics  from  a  High  Church 
hand-book  published  two  or  three  years  ago,  in 
which  the  writer  rejoices  in  the  spread  of  High  Church 
principles  as  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  there  are  now 
in  this  country  so  many  churches  in  which  incense  is 
used,  so  many  in  which  the  much-controverted  east- 
ward position  is  assumed,  so  many  in  which  altar 
lights  are  burned  during  the  sacrament  of  the 
Eucharist,  and  so  on,  and  so  on.  Instead  of  the  pure, 
spiritual  religion  of  Jesus  we  get  a  religion  of  the 
senses,  a  baptized  paganism  after  this  fashion.  '  Ye 
observe  days,  and  months,  and  seasons,  and  years,' 
Paul  wrote  to  the  Galatians  ;  '  /  am  afraid  of  you^ 
And  no  wonder ;  for  when  ritual  is  the  supreme  care 
of  the  Church,  the  things  most  worth  caring  for  are 
soon  lost  sight  of  I  am  not  a  Covenanter  nor  the 
son  of  a  Covenanter ;  but  when  your  brave  Covenant- 
ing forefathers,  in  the  days  of  Scotland's  bloody  sweat 
and  agony,  spread  the  white  cloth  on  the  bleak 
mountain-side,  and  with  only  a  deal  table  as  their 
'altar,'  and  a  coarse  earthenware  vessel  as  their 
chalice,  did  '  eat  this  bread  and  drink  this  cup,'  they 
knew  more  of  the  'Real  Presence'  of  Him  who 
said,  'This  do  in  remembrance  of  Me,'  than  is 
possible  when,  as  so  often  to-day,  the  spiritual 
reality  is  hidden  amid  the  blazing  splendours,  the 
visible  pomp  and  circumstance,  of  a  priestly 
ministration. 

And  further,  this  movement  is  a  distinctly  retro- 


THE  SECOND  COMMANDMENT  5  I 

grade  movement.  In  its  inmost  spirit  it  belongs  to 
the  dead  past  rather  than  to  the  living  present.  Let 
me  explain  what  I  mean.  When  we  study  the  Old 
Testament  dispensation,  we  are  met  at  every  turn  by 
rite,  symbol,  and  ordinance.  These  things  were  bound 
up  with  the  very  life  of  Judaism.  But  now,  if  we  turn 
to  the  New  Testament,  what  do  we  find  ?  That  of 
all  the  ritual  observances  to  which  so  much  importance 
had  hitherto  been  attached,  not  one  remains  in  force. 
The  symbolism  of  faith  is  now  represented  only  by 
what  we  term  the  two  sacraments — Baptism  and  the 
Lord's  Supper — concerning  which  it  is  only  necessary 
here  to  say  that  late  ecclesiastical  usage  has  often 
attributed  to  them  a  significance  of  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  find  any  trace,  even  the  slightest,  in  the 
New  Testament  itself.  To  these  two  facts  let  a 
third  be  added.  Says  St.  John,  in  his  vision  of  the 
heavenly  Jerusalem, '  I  saw  no  temple  therein,  for  the 
Lord  God  Almighty  and  the  Lamb  are  the  temple  of 
it'  Here  then  is  the  witness  of  revelation  to  the  true 
place  of  ritual :  first  (and  this  is  the  lowest  stage),  we 
have  Judaism,  with  its  complex  ritualistic  machinery  ; 
then  Christianity,  discarding  for  the  most  part  every- 
thing of  the  kind,  though  still  ordaining  certain 
simple  rites;  and  last  of  all,  the  vision  of  the  per- 
fected future  from  which  all  trace  of  the  figurative 
and  symbolical  has  passed  for  ever  away. 

Then,  if  these  things  are  so,  where  does  the  modern 
ritualist  come  in  ?     Do  you   not  see  that  the  whole 


52  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

movement  is  a  gigantic  anachronism  ?  It  is  putting 
back  the  hands  of  the  clock  some  three  thousand 
years.  The  very  fact  that  God  once  used  ritualism 
on  the  large  scale  and  then  deliberately  put  it  by,  is 
the  strongest  of  all  reasons  why  we  should  not  now 
go  back  to  it.  '  Ye  that  have  come  to  know  God,' 
Paul  wrote  to  the  Galatians — and  verily  it  is  a  thing 
to  be  marvelled  at  that  thinking  men  with  that  great 
Epistle  in  their  hands  should  be  led  astray  by  the 
shallow  plausibilities  of  a  pretty  ceremonialism — 
*  how  turn  ye  back  again  to  the  weak  and  beggarly 
rudiments,  whereunto  ye  desire  to  be  in  bondage 
over  again  ? '  And  a  '  turning  back '  the  movement 
certainly  is.  It  is  the  man  that  was  healed  going 
back  to  the  crutches  with  which  he  used  to  hobble 
along  in  the  days  of  his  lameness  ;  it  is  the  grown- 
up man,  who  has  learned  to  read,  going  back  to  the 
ABC  picture-book  of  his  childhood  ;  it  is  for  us  who 
have  with  open  face  beheld  Hint  to  choose  rather  to 
dwell  among  the  types  and  emblems  that  do  but 
dimly  shadow  Him  forth. 

Is  it  said  that  multitudes  find  in  these  things  helps 
to  a  higher  life  ?  Be  it  so  ;  yet  even  then  the  word 
of  warning  is  not  unneeded.  But  when  men  say,  as 
they  do  say,  that  these  things  are  necessary,  and  that 
without  them  it  is  impossible  to  please  God,  we  dare 
not  be  silent  Do  you  remember  how,  we  are  told, 
the  Greeks  came  to  Jesus  ?  They  came  first  to  Philip 
of  Bethsaida  and  asked  him,  saying,  '  Sir,  we  would 


THE   SECOND   COMMANDMENT  53 

see  Jesus.*  Philip  cometh  and  telleth  Andrew  ;  then 
Andrew  cometh  and  Philip,  and  they  tell  Jesus. 
And  there  are  some  who  would  fain  persuade  us  that 
it  is  only  in  that  same  circumambient  fashion  that  a 
man  can  find  his  way  to  Christ.  You  must  come  by 
the  '  Church/  or  the  priest,  or  the  sacrament.  A 
thousand  times  No  !  I  am  no  violent  anti-Romanist, 
God  knows,  but  I  am  a  Protestant,  and  I  for  one  do 
protest  against  the  idea  that  any  rite,  or  priest,  or 
church  has  right  or  authority  to  stand  between  my 
soul  and  my  Saviour.  That  hateful  heresy,  the 
fruitful  mother  of  a  thousand  mischiefs,  is  rearing  its 
head  amongst  us  again  to-day,  and  if  we  do  not  take 
heed  to  ourselves,  if  not  we,  then  our  children,  will 
have  to  fight  the  battle  of  the  Reformation  over  again. 
Thank  God  it  is  as  easy  to  come  to  Christ  as  it  was 
in  the  days  when  Nicodemus  came  by  night  and 
when  the  woman  of  Samaria  talked  with  Him  by  the 
well-side.  The  way  of  approach  is  as  direct,  as 
immediate  as  ever  it  was :  '  Him  that  cometh  unto 
Me  I  will  in  no  wise  cast  out ' ;  *  him  ...  to  Me ' — 
and  the  middleman,  let  him  call  himself  by  whatever 
name  he  will,  is  an  intruder.  And  what  can  he  do 
for  us  ?  We  have  our  great  High  Priest,  and  all  that 
draw  near  to  God  through  Him,  He  is  able  to  save 
to  the  uttermost.  Now,  though  you  have  ten  thousand 
earthly  intermediaries,  how  much  can  they  add  to 
God's  great  '  uttermost '  ?  Therefore  let  us  ourselves 
come,  and  bid  all  men  come,  and  come  boldly,  unto  the 


54  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

throne  of  grace,  that  we  may  receive  mercy,  and  may 
find  grace  to  help  us  in  time  of  need. 

Ill 

And  now,  in  conclusion,  let  us  glance  for  a  moment 
at  the  stern  words  with  which  obedience  to  this 
commandment  is  enforced  :  '  For  I  the  Lord  thy  God 
am  a  jealous  God,  visiting  the  iniquity  of  the  fathers 
upon  the  children,  upon  the  third  and  upon  the  fourth 
generation  of  them  that  hate  Me ;  and  showing 
mercy  unto  thousands  of  them  that  love  Me  and  keep 
My  commandments.'  The  words  have  been  often 
misunderstood,  and  sometimes  by  certain  sceptics  of 
the  baser  sort  grossly  caricatured.  Men  have  read  in 
them  the  blind  vengeance  of  a  vindictive  Deity,  the 
unreasoning  fury  of  one  who,  when  he  has  been 
wronged,  strikes  out  wildly,  not  knowing  or  caring 
on  whom  his  blows  may  fall.  Why,  they  have  asked, 
should  the  children  be  made  to  suffer  for  the  iniquity 
of  their  fathers  ? 

Do  not  let  us  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  if  there  is 
here  what  looks  like  a  terrible  threat,  there  is  likewise 
a  promise.  And  the  promise  is  greater  than  the 
threat,  for  if  the  iniquity  of  the  fathers  is  to  be  visited 
upon  the  children  unto  the  tJiird  mid  fourth  generation, 
mercy  is  to  be  shown  unto  a  thousand  generations} 

^  This  is,  without  doubt,  the  true  rendering.  See  R.V.  marg.,  and 
cp.  Deut.  vii.  9:  'The  faithful  God,  which  keepeth  covenant  and 
mercy  with  them  that  love  Him,  and  keep  His  commandments,  to  a 
thousand  generations.' 


THE   SECOND   COMMANDMENT  55 

And  when  we  come  to  examine  this  twofold  state- 
ment of  God's  dealings  with  man,  what  is  it  but  a 
simple  and  unscientific  statement  of  the  truths  which 
nowadays  we  sum  up  under  the  convenient  term  of 
heredity  ?  The  race  is  one.  For  good  or  for  ill,  the  life 
of  the  one  is  bound  up  in  the  life  of  the  many.  And 
instead  of  murmuring,  should  we  not  rather  be  thank- 
ful that  these  things  are  so  ?  What  other  guarantee 
have  we  for  the  progress  of  mankind  ?  If  the  gains 
accumulated  in  one  generation  could  not  be  passed 
on  to  the  next,  if  the  fathers  could  transmit  nothing 
to  the  children,  every  generation  would  need  to  begin 
anew,  the  race  would  be  at  a  standstill.  And  because 
this  is  not  the  law  of  our  life,  therefore  are  we  where 
we  are  to-day ;  others  have  laboured,  and  we  have 
entered  into  their  labours. 

But,  of  necessity,  the  truth  is  two-sided.  The  law 
works  with  stern  impartiality.  We  cannot  choose 
the  good,  and  leave  the  bad,  perpetuating  the  one  and 
annihilating  the  other.  Every  man  must  enter  upon 
the  whole  of  his  inheritance,  the  bad  as  well  as  the 
good.  It  may  seem  hard  that  the  iniquity  of  the 
fathers  should  be  visited  upon  the  children,  yet  when 
we  remember  that  this  is  so  by  virtue  of  a  principle 
which  alone  secures  the  growing  welfare  of  the  race, 
all  idea  of  injustice  vanishes.  The  law  which  underlies 
this  great  sanction  of  the  Second  Commandment, 
rightly  understood,  is  the  merciful  provision  of  a  good 
and  wise  God,  who,  through  all  man's  sin  and  folly,  is 


$6  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

ever  seeking  to  lead  him  to  higher  and  higher  levels 
of  goodness  and  truth. 

And  why  should  we  stumble  at  that  word,  *  I  the 
Lord  thy  God  am  a  jealous  God '  ?  The  word  has 
suffered  serious  degradation  at  the  hands  of  us  in  whom 
jealousy  is  so  often  a  mean  and  unworthy  temper. 
Nevertheless  there  is  a  holy  jealousy,  a  jealousy 
which  is  the  pain  of  wounded,  thwarted  love,  the 
hunger  of  love  for  that  which  is  its  due,  its  own.  And 
such  is  the  jealousy  of  God.  Why  did  He  command 
His  people,  saying,  '  Thou  shalt  not  make  unto  thee 
any  graven  image'?  Because  He  would  have  all 
their  love  for  Himself  And  when  they  thrust  creed, 
or  rite,  or  symbol  between  Himself  and  them,  He 
sent  His  prophets  to  lay  rude  hands  on  the  unholy 
thing,  and  to  cry,  '  Nehushtan  !  a  piece  of  brass  !  In 
the  Lord  God  of  hosts  be  your  trust,  and  not  in  these 
things ! ' 

Once  when  I  was  a  lad  a  jeering  unbeliever  said 
to  me,  '  Your  Bible  is  not  true  to  itself :  it  says  that 
God  is  love,  and  it  says  that  He  is  a  jealous  God — 
how  can  He  be  both  ? '  and  I,  being  only  a  child,  did 
not  know  how  to  answer  him.  But  now  I  know  that 
God  could  not  be  a  jealous  God  if  He  were  not  a 
loving  God ;  His  jealousy  is  a  measure  of  His  love. 
Never  could  He  speak  thus  to  me  if  He  were 
indifferent  to  me,  if  it  were  a  matter  of  no  concern 
to  Him  whether  I  served  Him  or  not.  And  when  I 
read  these  old,  old  words,  instead  of  the  face  of  an 


THE   SECOND   COMMANDMENT  57 

angry  Deity,  breathing  forth  threatenings  and  wrath, 
which  is  all  that  some  men  see,  there  meets  me  a 
Face  all  aglow  with  love,  and  eyes  that  hunger  for 
my  love.  And  when  I  put  down  my  ear  to  listen, 
instead  of  the  gnashing  fury  of  jealous  hate,  which 
is  all  that  some  men  hear,  a  Voice  of  love,  tender, 
beseeching,  pitiful,  calls  to  me :  '  Child  of  man,  I 
have  redeemed  thee,  thou  art  Mine;  yield  thyself 
to  Me.' 


THE   THIRD   COMMANDMENT 


'  Thou  shalt  not  take  the  name  of  the  Lord  thy  God  in  vain  ;  for  the 
Lord  will  not  hold  him  guiltless  that  taketh  His  name  in  vain.' — 
Exodus  xx.  7. 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT 

Following  the  plan  of  the  two  previous  addresses, 
let  us  begin  by  learning  in  what  sense  this  command- 
ment was  understood  by  those  to  whom  it  was  first 
given,  passing  then  to  the  consideration  of  its  meaning 
for  us  to-day. 

I 

There  is  some  slight  ambiguity  in  the  wording  of 
the  commandment.  What  is  it  to  take  the  name 
of  the  Lord  '  in  vain  '  ?  The  phrase  so  translated — I 
follow  the  exposition  of  Principal  Dykes — may  mean 
either  of  two  things  :  (i)  Falsely^  that  is,  to  cover  a 
lie ;  or  (2)  Without  reality,  that  is,  as  an  empty, 
hollow  pretence.  So  that  the  commandment  may 
be  regarded  as  a  prohibition  of  false  swearing;  or, 
giving  to  it  a  more  general  meaning,  as  directed 
against  all  idle  and  irreverent  use  of  the  Divine  name 
whatever.  In  a  word,  the  commandment  condemns 
either  perjury  or  profanity.  If  now  we  turn  to  the 
book  of  Leviticus,  we  shall  find  there  (xix.  12)  a  kind 
of  amplified  version  of  this  law,  in  which  both  sins 

61 


62  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

are  condemned  :  '  Ye  shall  not  swear  by  My  name 
falsely;  neither  shalt  thou  profane  the  name  of  thy 
God  :  I  am  Jehovah.'  We  shall  therefore  probably 
be  right  if,  interpreting  the  earlier  word  in  the  light 
of  the  later,  we  regard  this  commandment  as  the 
prohibition  of  perjury  and  profanity  alike. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that,  so  emphatic  is  the 
testimony  which  this  ancient  code  bears  to  the 
cardinal  virtue  of  truthfulness,  the  sin  of  false  swearing 
is  condemned  both  by  the  Ninth  and  Third  Command- 
ments. There  it  is  forbidden  as  a  crime  against  man, 
here  as  a  sin  against  the  Most  High  God,  whose 
majesty  it  violates,  whose  judgment  it  defies. 

Considerable  discussion  has  arisen  concerning  the 
relation  of  this  commandment  to  the  taking  of 
judicial  oaths.  It  will  hardly  be  contended  that  the 
custom  of  oath-taking  in  courts  of  justice  is  a  breach 
of  the  commandment  as  it  stands  in  the  Decalogue. 
To  say  nothing  of  the  solemn  example  of  Jehovah 
Himself  swearing  by  His  own  awful  Name,  the  sense 
of  this  law  was  undoubtedly  given  by  Jesus  when  He 
said,  '  Ye  have  heard  that  it  was  said  to  them  of  old 
time,  Thou  shalt  not  forswear  thyself,  but  shall 
perform  unto  the  Lord  thine  oaths.'  It  is,  of  course, 
the  words  of  Christ  which  follow  which  have  given 
rise  to  the  doubt  that  has  arisen  in  the  minds  of 
some  :  *  I  say  unto  you,  Swear  not  at  all ;  neither  by 
the  heaven,  for  it  is  the  throne  of  God ;  nor  by  the 
earth,   for  it   is  the  footstool  of   His    feet;    nor  by 


THE   THIRD   COMMANDMENT  63 

Jerusalem,  for  it  is  the  city  of  the  great  King.  Neither 
shalt  thou  swear  by  thy  head,  for  thou  canst  not  make 
one  hair  white  or  black.  But  let  your  speech  be.  Yea, 
yea ;  Nay,  nay :  and  whatsoever  is  more  than  these 
is  of  the  evil  one.'  The  Friends,  as  is  well  known, 
regard  these  words  as  an  absolute  prohibition  of  all 
oaths  under  any  circumstances  whatever.  Let  m.e 
say  at  once  that,  whether  their  interpretation  be  right 
or  wrong,  it  is  nothing  less  than  monstrous  that  any 
one  holding  it,  and  therefore  conscientiously  question- 
ing the  lawfulness  of  oaths,  should  be  subjected  to 
legal  or  civil  disabilities  for  refusing  to  take  them. 
Ideally,  too,  in  this  as  in  other  matters,  I  believe  the 
Quaker  is  right.  His  is  the  goal  towards  which 
Christ  is  pointing  us  ;  and  when  human  society  is 
reconstructed  on  the  basis  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  and  a  man's  word  is  his  bond,  the  oath  will 
be  a  meaningless  form,  because  it  will  be  impossible 
to  add  to  the  sacredness  of  the  obligations  of  truth. 
But  that  time  is  not  yet ;  and  meanwhile,  because  of 
the  hardness  of  men's  hearts,  many  things  are  suffered 
to  remain  which  will  one  day  pass  away.  Further, 
Christ's  words  must  be  interpreted  in  the  light  of  the 
circumstances  under  which  they  were  spoken  and  of 
the  rest  of  Scripture.  When  Christ  spoke  truthfulness 
was  being  undermined  by  the  false  distinctions  per- 
mitted and  encouraged  by  the  casuistry  of  the  Rabbis. 
There  were,  they  said,  oaths  that  were  binding  and 
oaths  that  were  not  binding.     If  a  man  sware  by 


64  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

Jehovah,  or  used  the  Divine  Name  at  all,  his  oath  bound 
him  ;  but  if  the  Sacred  Name  did  not  pass  his  lips,  if 
he  only  sware  by  Jerusalem,  or  by  the  Temple,  or  by 
his  head,  he  might  go  free.  Christ  broke  through 
this  mesh  of  rabbinical  sophistry  with  one  plain  word, 
and,  regardless  for  the  moment  of  all  possible  ex- 
ceptions, declared,  *  I  say  unto  you.  Swear  not  at  all.' 
That  there  are  exceptions,  the  New  Testament  itself 
seems  plainly  to  show.  Witness  the  solemn  assevera- 
tions of  St.  Paul :  '  Before  God  I  lie  not,'  '  I  call  God 
for  a  witness  upon  my  soul,'  'God  is  my  witness, 
whom  I  serve  in  my  spirit  in  the  gospel  of  His  Son.' 
'  And  our  Lord  also,'  as  one  writer  points  out,  '  when 
put  on  oath  before  the  high  priest,  took  the  adjura- 
tion as  made  under  the  law,  and  thus  both  recog- 
nized and  established  the  lawfulness  and  propriety 
of  the  judicial  custom.' 

Of  the  sins  which  this  commandment  forbids, 
perjury  and  profanity,  it  is  not  necessary  for  me  to 
speak ;  the  one  is  a  crime  against  the  common  law 
punishable  by  severe  penalties  ;  the  other  is  now  an 
offence  so  vulgar  that  to  be  guilty  of  it  is  to  be  guilty 
of  a  breach  of  the  laws  of  all  good  society.  It  is 
indeed  a  fact  of  sad  significance  that,  as  Dr.  Dale 
says,  profanity  should  have  held  its  own  as  long 
as  it  was  regarded  only  as  a  sin  against  God,  and 
vanished  as  soon  as  it  became  an  offence  against 
the  conventionalities  of  the  drawing-room.  But  the 
commandment  is  more  than  a  prohibition,  it  is  a  call 


THE   THIRD   COMMANDMENT  65 

to  reverence,  and  it  is  as  such  that  I  want  us  here 
carefully  to  consider  it.  'Thou  shalt  not  take  the 
name  of  the  Lord  thy  God  in  vain ' ;  that  is  to  say, 
not  the  '  name  '  simply,  but  all  that  the  name  connotes 
and  reveals  ;  the  character  and  being  of  Him  who 
took  it,  that  thereby  He  might  make  Himself  known, 
are  to  be  held  in  reverence.  The  Jews,  with  that 
strange  literalism  which  has  always  been  their  curse, 
gave  their  reverence  to  the  word  itself  The  mere 
vocable  was  invested  with  mysterious  awe.  It  was 
never  used  in  their  intercourse  with  heathen  nations ; 
gradually  they  ceased  even  to  use  it  themselves. 
There  is  a  tradition  that  it  was  heard  but  once  a  year, 
when  it  was  uttered  by  the  high  priest  on  the  great 
day  of  Atonement.  *  In  reading  the  Scriptures  it 
became  customary  never  to  pronounce  it,  but  to 
replace  it,  wherever  it  occurred,  with  another  Divine 
name,  which  was  regarded  as  less  awful  and  august' 
And,  as  every  one  who  has  had  a  first  lesson  in  the 
reading  of  his  Hebrew  Bible  knows,  the  signs  of  that 
strange  custom  are  to  be  found  there  to  this  day.^ 
This  is  the  beginning  of  that  Pharisaism  which  by 
and  by  will  devour  widows'  houses  and  for  a  pretence 
make  long  prayers.  Not  with  such  observances  can 
God  be  well-pleased.  None  the  less  His  word  abides, 
not  one  jot  or  tittle  of  this  law  has  passed  away,  and 
His  call  to  reverence  is  as  loud  and  clear  as  ever. 
Let  us  give  earnest  heed  unto  it  to-day. 

1  See  Dr.  Dale's  Lecture  on  the  Third  Commandment. 
E 


66  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 


II 

There  has  been  of  late  years  a  marked  decay  of  the 
spirit  of  reverence.  Religious  authority,  rank,  grey 
hairs,  the  parental  relation — none  of  these  command 
the  reverence  once  yielded  ungrudgingly  to  them. 
Nor  is  the  tendency  by  any  means  confined  to  our 
own  country.  In  modern  France,  Mr.  Hamerton 
tells  us,  the  sentiment  of  reverence  is  less  and  less 
cultivated.  'The  difficulty  is,'  he  says,  'to  find 
objects  for  reverence  that  can  effectually  withstand 
the  desecrating  light  of  modern  criticism.'  The 
average  Frenchman  finds  them  neither  in  religion  nor 
in  politics ;  and  though  in  family  life  there  is  much 
affection  and  some  respect,  there  is  no  veneration. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  we  have  not  suffered  to  the 
same  extent  in  this  country ;  but  that  we  have 
suffered  seriously,  no  one,  I  think,  will  deny.  But  it 
may  be  urged  that  much  of  the  so-called  reverence 
of  the  past  was  false  and  degrading.  The  obsequious 
deference  of  the  poor  to  rank  and  wealth  has  given 
place  to  the  manlier  independence  of  an  age  that 
believes 

*  The  rank  is  but  the  guinea  stamp. 
The  man 's  the  gowd  for  a'  that.' 

The  superstitious  veneration  that  clung  about  some  of 
the  great  names  and  hoary  institutions  of  the  past  has 
vanished  at  the  first  touch  of  the  light  of  truth.     It 


THE   THIRD   COMMANDMENT  6^ 

was  inevitable  that  it  should  be  so,  and  instead  of 
lamenting  the  change  we  ought  rather  to  rejoice  in  it. 
This  is  true,  yet  our  danger  is  very  real ;  the  danger, 
that  is,  that  in  uprooting  the  tares  we  uproot  the 
wheat  also,  and  so  the  true  and  the  false  perish 
together.  Do  any  of  us  adequately  realize  the  peril 
there  is  to  everything  high  and  worthy  in  life  through 
the  loss  of  the  spirit  of  reverence  ?  To  coarse,  positive, 
loud-tongued  irreverence  nothing  great  or  good  is 
possible ;  and  I  do  not  know  if  there  is  anything  quite 
so  utterly  damning  and  damnable — I  use  the  strong 
words  advisedly — as  the  cynical,  nil  ad7nirari  spirit 
which  has  fallen  like  a  withering  blight  on  the  minds 
of  so  many  of  the  clever  young  men  of  to-day. 

Yet  there  could  be  no  greater  mistake  than  to 
suppose  that  reverence  fades  when  knowledge  grows. 
Mr.  Hamerton  speaks,  in  the  passage  I  have  already 
quoted,  of '  the  desecrating  light  of  modern  criticism ' ; 
and  undoubtedly  criticism  is  often  rude  and  irreverent 
enough  ;  indeed  Mr.  Hamerton  goes  so  far  as  to  say 
that  the  critical  writing  which  is  most  keenly  enjoyed 
to-day  is  absolutely  destitute  of  veneration.  Never- 
theless, the  truly  great  are  never  scoffers ;  they  refuse 
to  sit  in  the  seat  of  the  scornful.  '  Mockery  is  the 
fume  of  little  hearts.'  '  There  is  no  chance  of  truth 
at  the  goal,'  says  Coleridge,  '  where  there  is  not  a 
child-like  humility  at  the  starting-point'  Truth  must 
be  sought,  as  another  eminent  truth-seeker  of  our  own 
day  has  told  us,  not  clutching  her  by  the  hair  of  the 


68  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

head  and  dragging  her  after  us  in  a  kind  of  boisterous 
triumph,  but  devoutly,  tentatively,  and  with  the  air 
of  one  touching  the  hem  of  a  sacred  garment ;  not  as 
a  prisoner  of  war,  but  as  a  goddess.  All  our  wisest 
and  best  teachers  emphasize  this  for  us.  *  We  live 
by  admiration,  hope,  and  love,'  says  Wordsworth. 
'  The  first  condition  of  human  goodness,'  says  George 
Eliot,  '  is  something  to  love  ;  the  second  something 
to  reverence.'  '  All  real  joy  and  power  of  progress  in 
humanity,'  says  Ruskin,  '  depend  on  finding  some- 
thing to  reverence,  and  all  the  baseness  and  misery 
of  humanity  begin  in  disdain.'  And  therefore  does 
Tennyson  pray — 

*  Let  knowledge  grow  from  more  to  more, 
But  more  of  reverence  in  us  dwell.' 


Ill 

Especially  do  we  need  to  cherish  the  spirit  of 
reverence  in  religion.  And  certainly  no  man  can  be 
a  believing  student  of  the  Bible  and  yet  count  this 
one  of  the  'second-rate  sentiments  of  the  soul.' 
Summarize  the  first  three  commandments,  and  is  not 
this  what  they  say  to  us  :  '  Think  of  God  worthily, 
worship  Him  worthily,  let  His  name  be  counted 
holy'?  When  Jehovah  appeared  to  Moses  in  the 
midst  of  the  burning  bush  in  the  wilderness.  His  first 
word  to  him  was  a  call  to  reverence  :  '  Draw  not  nigh 
hither  :  put  off  thy  shoes  from  off  thy  feet,  for  the 


THE  THIRD  COMMANDMENT  6g 

place  whereon  thou  standest  is  holy  ground.'  When 
Isaiah  beheld  the  vision  of  the  Lord,  it  was  as  one 
sitting  upon  a  throne,  high  and  lifted  up,  whose  train 
filled  the  Temple  :  '  Above  Him  stood  the  seraphim  : 
each  one  had  six  wings  ;  with  twain  he  covered  his 
face,  and  with  twain  he  covered  his  feet,  and  with 
twain  he  did  fly.  And  one  cried  unto  another,  and 
said.  Holy,  holy,  holy  is  the  Lord  of  hosts :  the 
whole  earth  is  full  of  His  glory.'  *  God  is  in  heaven 
and  thou  upon  earthy  says  the  writer  of  Ecclesiastes 
in  one  pregnant  sentence,  '  therefore  let  thy  words  be 
few!  And  though  in  the  New  Testament  God  comes 
down  out  of  heaven,  the  law  of  reverence  loses  none 
of  its  stringency.  '  When  ye  pray,'  said  our  Lord  to 
His  disciples, '  say,  Our  Father,  which  art  in  heaven  ' ; 
but  the  first  petition  checks  all  irreverent  presumption, 
*  Hallowed  be  Thy  Name.'  Do  we  not  read  of  Christ 
Himself  that  He  was  '  heard  for  His  godly  fear '  ? 
So  does  all  Scripture,  alike  by  precept  and  example, 
exhort  us  to  have  grace  '  whereby  we  may  offer 
service  well-pleasing  to  God,  with  reverence  and  awe  ; 
for  our  God  is  a  consuming  fire.' 

Yet  will  any  one  deny  that  there  are  multitudes  of 
Christian  men  and  women  who  never  think  seriously 
about  this  matter  at  all  ?  Take,  e.g.,  our  treatment  of 
the  words  of  Holy  Writ.  When  we  remember  what 
the  Bible  is  ;  how  that,  enshrined  within  it,  like  a 
precious  jewel  in  its  casket,  is  the  very  word  of  God 
Himself;  when  we  call  to  mind  all  that  it  has  been 


70  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

to  countless  generations  of  the  sainted  dead,  and  all 
that  it  is  still  to  multitudes  of  earth's  holiest  and  best, 
is  it  worthy  of  us,  to  take  no  higher  ground,  to  turn 
its  sacred  words  to  ridicule,  or  to  use  them  to  point 
our  sorry  jests  ?  I  remember  once  hearing  a  distin- 
guished preacher  and  Doctor  of  Divinity,  speaking 
from  this  very  desk,  perpetrate  a  miserable  joke,  which 
I  try  in  vain  to  forget,  about  the  parable  of  the 
Prodigal  Son.  It  was  sacrilege  ;  a  man  who  could 
jest  over  the  fifteenth  of  St.  Luke  '  might  have  chalked 
a  caricature  on  the  wall  of  the  Holy  of  Holies,  or 
scrawled  a  witticism  on  the  sepulchre  in  Joseph's 
garden.'  When  the  Church  trifles  with  her  holy 
things  after  that  fashion,  is  it  any  wonder  that  the 
world  is  quick  to  follow  her  unhallowed  example  ? 

As^ain,  have  not  we  Nonconformists  still  much  to 
learn  in  the  matter  of  the  conduct  of  public  worship  ? 
I  am  not  usually  disposed  to  apologize  for  Archbishop 
Laud — and  indeed,  in  these  days,  when  he  has  so  many 
apologists,  it  is  hardly  necessary — but  when  Laud 
found  the  Communion  Table,  which  then  stood  in  the 
middle  of  the  nave  of  the  church,  used  for  all  kinds 
of  purposes,  as  a  desk  for  irreverent  churchwardens, 
and  sometimes  even  as  a  hat-stand,  he  did  well  to  be 
angry.  And,  not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  upon  it,  are 
we  not  often  guilty  of  a  certain  irreverent  slovenliness 
in  the  worship  of  God's  house  ?  I  have  no  patience 
with  the  peddling  exegesis  of  the  ritualist  who  thinks 
that  the  meaning  of  Paul's  mistranslated  words  about 


THE   THIRD   COMMANDMENT  7 1 

bowing  '  at  the  name  of  Jesus '  is  fulfilled  by  the  wor- 
shipper bobbing  his  head  or  making  a  curtsy  at  the 
mention  of  the  Sacred  Name ;  nor  do  I  believe  that 
the  apostolic  injunction  to  do  everything  decently 
and  in  order  is  the  one  great  commandment  upon 
which  hang  all  the  law  and  the  prophets.  Neverthe- 
less, we  have  forgotten  the  honour  due  to  God's  great 
name.  We  have  belittled  the  idea  of  worship ;  our 
churches  and  chapels  are  to  us  often  no  more  than 
*  preaching-places ' ;  our  people  ask,  *  Who  is  going 
to  preach  ? '  and  what  is  perhaps  worst  of  all,  the  offer- 
ing of  the  congregation's  prayer  and  praise  and  the 
reading  of  the  Word  of  God — the  whole  service,  that 
is,  except  the  sermon — are  spoken  of  and  treated  as 
mere  'preliminaries.'  These  things,  let  us  frankly 
admit  it,  are  a  reproach  to  us.  We  must  strive  for 
the  exaltation  of  the  idea  of  worship  ;  and  if  the 
ritualist  or  anybody  else  has  shown  us  a  neglected 
duty,  let  us  be  unfeignedly  thankful,  and  make  haste 
to  mend  our  ways. 

Is  there  not  some  danger,  too,  to  the  Church  just 
now  from  a  false  sensationalism  ?  I  am  no  apologist 
for  dulness ;  and  some  of  the  churches  amongst  us 
which,  as  Sydney  Smith  used  to  say,  are  '  dying  of 
dignity,'  would  be  none  the  worse,  but  very  much  the 
better,  for  a  touch  of  the  extravagances  they  are  so 
quick  to  condemn  in  others.  For  there  is  a  true  as 
well  as  a  false  sensationalism ;  and  perhaps  the  most 
sensational  preaching  the  world  has  ever  listened  to 


72  THE  TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

was  heard   in   Galilee   more  than  eighteen  hundred 
years  ago.     Nevertheless,  there  is  danger.     It  is  not 
for  us  to  sit  in  judgment  on  men  who  have  bravely 
set  themselves  to  break  up  the  stony  indifference  of 
our  big  cities,  whose  methods  may  not  be  our  methods, 
yet  because  they  are  owned  by  God  are  above  our 
criticism  ;  but  when  one  reads  the  catch-titles  of  some 
modern   sermons,   and    the   advertisements  of  some 
present-day   services — advertisements   which   savour 
more  of  the  music-hall  than  of  the  House  of  God — he 
cannot  but  feel  that  St.  Paul's  '  all  things  to  all  men  ' 
is  already  strained  to  the  breaking-point,  and  that  it 
is  possible  to  sacrifice  too  much,  even  with  the  laud- 
able motive  of  winning  the  careless  and  the  indifferent. 
And,  again,  is  there  not  also  danger — to  take  but 
one  more  example — in  a  certain  type  of  evangelical 
Christianity  which,  glorying  as  is  its  right   in   the 
nearness  and  grace  of  Christ,  sometimes  forgets  what 
is  due  to   His   greatness  and  majesty?     God  forbid 
that  I  should  rob  one  heart  of  the  joy  and  strength 
that  come  to  it  through  the  knowledge  of  that  free 
access  which  in  Christ  all  men  have  to  God.     Yet  do 
we  not  often  miss  in  the  hymns  and  prayers  of  to-day 
that  strain   of  awe  and   wondering    adoration   that 
ought  ever  to  mingle  with  our  words  when  we  speak 
of  Christ  ?     Let  us  beware  of  overmuch  familiarity  ; 
do  not  let  us  fondle  Christ.     '  My  Lord  and  my  God  ! ' 
faith  cries  in  the  rapture  of  her  new-found  joy ;  but 
let  her  not  forget  that  He  is  '  my  Lord  and  my  God' 


THE   THIRD   COMMANDMENT  73 

*  God  is  in  heaven,  and  thou  upon  earth  ;  therefore 
let  thy  words  be  few.' 

Let  no  one  say  these  things  are  '  trifles.'  Rather 
let  us  remember,  as  some  one  has  said,  that  '  reverence 
is  the  comely  sheath  within  which  all  the  vital  New 
Testament  virtues  are  nurtured.'  Habits  of  irrever- 
ence end  inevitably  in  the  coarsening  of  the  soul's 
fibre,  and  religion  itself  cannot  long  live  where 
reverence  has  died  out. 


IV 

How  then  shall  we  cherish  and  foster  the  reverential 
spirit  ?  The  answer  must  be  in  one  word.  *  Whatso- 
ever things  are  honest' — or,  as  the  word  literally 
means,  ' reverend,' to  be  venerated — 'think  on  these 
things.'  Every  day  the  soul  is  creating  its  own 
atmosphere,  its  own  environment,  which  in  turn 
reacts  upon  itself;  therefore  if  we  would  have  the 
reverent  spirit  we  must  fix  our  mind  upon  things 
worthy  to  be  had  in  reverence. 

But  now,  let  us  take  heed  how  we  apply  that.  Let 
us  foster,  say  some  among  us,  the  spirit  of  religious 
awe  by  subdued  cadence  and  mystic  colour  and 
Gothic  arch  ;  let  us  appeal  to  men  through  all  the 
subtlety  and  charm  of  an  ornate  and  beautiful  ritual. 
But  whatever  value  there  may  be  in  these  things  for 
some,  there  is  peril  in  the  use  of  them  ;  and  if  we 
Nonconformists  have  with  some  persistency  refused 


74  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

their  doubtful  aid,  it  has  not  been  without  good 
reason.  Our  emotions  may  be  kindled  or  subdued 
by  the  sweet  harmonies  of  colour  and  sound  ;  we  may 
be  rapt  into  solemn  ecstasy  by  the  beauty  of  wailing 
litany  or  rolling  symphony,  and  yet  in  all  this  there 
may  be  no  true  reverence.  Reverence  is  the  soul's 
awestruck  sense  of  the  presence  of  God.  When 
Moses  beheld  the  burning  bush  in  the  wilderness,  the 
sight  only  awakened  within  him  the  spirit  of  curiosity  : 
'  I  will  turn  aside  now,  and  see  this  great  sight,  why 
the  bush  is  not  burned ' ;  but  when  God  called  unto 
him  out  of  the  midst  of  the  bush  and  said,  *  I  am  the 
God  of  thy  fathers,  the  God  of  Abraham,  the  God  of 
Isaac,  and  the  God  of  Jacob,'  then  '  Moses  hid  his 
face ;  for  he  was  afraid  to  look  upon  God.'  And  it 
was  when  Isaiah  knew  that  his  eyes  had  seen  the  King, 
the  Lord  of  hosts,  that  his  soul  was  bowed  down  within 
him,  and  he  cried,  '  Woe  is  me !  for  I  am  undone.' 

Brethren,  let  us  beware  of  a  counterfeit  reverence. 
I  would  rather,  if  I  may  adopt  the  words  of  another,^ 
be  a  follower  of  George  Fox,  and  sit  with  my  hat  on 
in  a  meeting-house  little  better  than  a  village  club- 
room,  than  educate  my  soul  into  an  awe  that  is  not 
born  of  the  thought — 

'  Lo,  God  is  here  !  let  us  adore, 

And  own  how  dreadful  is  this  place ! 
Let  all  within  us  feel  His  power, 
And  silent  bow  before  His  face.' 


•  See  a  very  striking  sermon  by  Rev.  T.  G.  Selby  in  his  Lesson  of 
1  Dile?}ima,  p.  143. 


THE  THIRD   COMMANDMENT  75 

Therefore  if  we  would  keep  this  Third  Command- 
ment, if  we  would  cherish  at  all  times  the  spirit  of 
reverence,  not  only  must  we  '  think  on  the  things 
that  are  reverend,'  but,  as  one  of  the  old  mystics 
loved  continually  to  say,  we  must  'realize  the 
presence  of  God.' 


THE   FOURTH    COMMANDMENT 


'  Remember  the  sabbath  day,  to  keep  it  holy.  Six  days  shalt  thou 
labour,  and  do  all  thy  work  :  but  the  seventh  day  is  a  sabbath  unto 
the  Lord  thy  God  :  in  it  thou  shalt  not  do  any  work,  thou,  nor  thy 
son,  nor  thy  daughter,  thy  manservant,  nor  thy  maidservant,  nor  thy 
cattle,  nor  thy  stranger  that  is  within  thy  gates :  for  in  six  days  the 
Lord  made  heaven  and  earth,  the  sea,  and  all  that  in  them  is,  and 
rested  the  seventh  day :  wherefore  the  Lord  blessed  the  sabbath  day, 
and  hallowed  it.' — ExoDus  xx.  8-11. 


THE  FOURTH  COMMANDMENT  ^ 

There  is,  perhaps,  none  of  the  commandments  con- 
cerning which  it  is  so  difficult  to  speak  plainly  and 
to  some  practical  purpose  as  the  Fourth.  I  hold  en- 
tirely with  those  who  say  that  the  pulpit  is  not  for 
the  airing  of  man's  doubts,  but  for  the  proclamation 
of  God's  certainties.  Yet  this  is  just  one  of  those 
cases  in  which,  though  a  man  is  almost  compelled  to 
speak,  it  is  so  difficult  for  him  to  speak  with  certainty. 
The  relation  in  which  Christians  stand  to-day  to 
the  Sabbath  instituted  by  the  Mosaic  law  has  been 
construed  in  terms  directly  opposite  by  men  of  equal 
scholarship  and  godliness.  Thus  the  great  Conti- 
nental Reformers,  Lutheran  and  Calvinist  alike,  held 
that '  Scripture  hath  abolished  the  Sabbath  by  teach- 
ing that  all  Mosaic  ceremonies  may  be  omitted  since 
the  Gospel  has  been  revealed.'  The  Scotch  Reformers, 
on  the  other  hand,  declared  that  God  '  in  His  Word, 
by  a  positive  moral  and  perpetual  commandment, 
binding  all  men  in  all  ages,  hath  particularly 
appointed  one  day  in  seven  for  a  Sabbath,  to  be  kept 

1  I   have   to   express   my  indebtedness  throughout  this  chapter  to 
Dr.  Dale's  lecture  on  the  same  subject. 


8o  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

holy  unto  Him ' :  and  they  even  go  so  far  as  to  affirm 
that  this  day  '  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  to  the 
resurrection  of  Christ  was  the  last  day  of  the  week, 
and  from  the  resurrection  of  Christ  was  changed  into 
the  first  day  of  the  week.'^ 

If  from  doctrine  we  turn  to  practice  the  diver- 
gencies are  even  more  bewildering.  Of  our  custom 
in  Scotland  it  is  needless  for  me  to  speak  ;  but  if 
you  go  on  to  the  Continent  you  find  a  very  different 
practice  prevailing.  And  when  I  speak  of  the  Con- 
tinent, I  am  not  thinking  merely  of  the  gay,  butterfly 
life  of  the  average  Parisian.  In  Germany,  e.g:,  it  is 
said  that  the  Sabbath  is  kept  by  the  very  strictest 
and  most  spiritual  of  the  people  as  a  day  for  public 
worship  and  general  relaxation  ;  and  when  the 
worship  is  over  the  pastor  will  join  with  his  people 
in  playing  their  national  games.  No  one,  I  suppose, 
will  question  the  devoutness  and  sincerity  of  the  late 
Prince  Consort ;  yet  it  was  a  well-known  fact  that 
the  Prince  used  frequently  to  spend  Sunday  evening 
in  playing  a  game  of  chess  with  his  friends  ;  and 
when  some  one  whom  this  fact  greatly  shocked  wrote 
to  Bishop  Wilberforce  on  the  matter,  the  Bishop  re- 
plied by  reminding  his  correspondent  of  the  facts 
which  I  have  just  mentioned,  and  of  the  difference 
between  the  Prince's  training  as  a  German  Lutheran 
and  ours  in  this  country.^ 

^  See  Chadwick's  Exodus  {Expositor' s  Bible),  p.  305. 
^  See  Bishop  Wilbeiforce's  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  377. 


THE   FOURTH    COMMANDMENT  8 1 

And  for  some  of  us  the  case  is  still  further  compli- 
cated by  the  fact  that  while  in  practice  we  hold  with 
those  of  the  straiter  sect,  we  are  yet  often  compelled 
to  part  company  with  them  as  soon  as  they  begin  to 
give  reasons  for  the  faith  that  is  in  them.  Good 
causes  are  often  weakened  by  the  hopelessly  bad 
logic  of  some  of  their  advocates  ;  and  that  is  the  fate 
which  has  befallen  the  Sabbath  question.  The  con- 
clusions of  the  Sabbatarian  are  often  irreproachable, 
but  his  premises  are  usually  impossible  ;  he  gives  his 
case  away  the  moment  he  opens  his  mouth  in  argu- 
ment. Most  people  know  the  advice  once  given 
by  Lord  Mansfield  to  a  man  of  practical  good  sense 
who,  being  appointed  governor  to  a  colony,  had 
to  preside  in  its  court  of  justice  without  previous 
judicial  practice  or  legal  education.  '  Give  your 
decision  boldly,'  said  Lord  Mansfield,  'for  it  will 
probably  be  right ;  but  never  venture  on  assigning 
reasons,  for  they  will  almost  infallibly  be  wrong/ 
When  I  listen  to  the  arguments  of  some  of  my 
Sabbatarian  friends,  I  am  often  tempted  to  wish  that 
it  was  possible  for  them  to  follow  the  same  advice. 

The  moral  of  all  this  is  surely  very  plain :  in  a 
matter  in  which  good  men  think  so  differently,  we 
must  avoid  all  censorious  and  uncharitable  judg- 
ments. Of  all  unlovely  sins,  the  sin  of  uncharitable- 
ness  is  the  unloveliest,  and  withal,  the  most  gratui- 
tous. Can  any  be  more  displeasing  to  God  than  they 
who    mingle    their    own    strict    observance    of    the 

F 


82  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

Sabbath  with  the  most  liberal  denunciations  of  all 
who  interpret  the  Divine  law  in  a  different  fashion  ? 
Ah,  brethren  !  it  will  avail  us  little  at  the  last  that  we 
have  kept  the  Fourth  Commandment  with  never  so 
much  diligence  if  all  our  life  has  been  a  transgression 
of  the  Eleventh  Com.mandment,  which  is  the  fulfilling 
of  the  whole  law.  '  One  man  esteemeth  one  day- 
above  another :  another  esteemeth  every  day  alike. 
Let  each  man  be  fully  assured  in  his  own  mind. 
Who  art  thou  that  judgest  the  servant  of  another? 
to  his  own  lord  he  standeth  or  falleth.'  That  is  the 
true  spirit  in  which  to  approach  the  subject,  and  it  is 
only  so  that  it  can  be  profitably,  or  even  safely, 
discussed. 


When  we  turn  to  the  New  Testament  for  our  in- 
struction, we  are  perhaps  somewhat  taken  aback  to 
find  that  its  first  word  on  the  subject  appears  to  be 
a  simple  negative,  and  to  this  effect,  that  the  Jeivish 
Sabbath  is  no  longer  bmding  on  Christiafts.  Yet  it 
seems  impossible  to  read  the  writings  of  St.  Paul  and 
avoid  that  conclusion. 

In  the  Old  Testament  we  find  special  reverence 
given  to  the  Sabbath  along  the  whole  line  of  Israel's 
history.  But  when  we  pass  to  the  New  Testament 
we  are  conscious  at  once  of  a  startling  change.  Even 
among  Jewish  Christians  we  see  the  observance  of 


THE   FOURTH   COMMANDMENT  83 

the  seventh  day  receding  further  and  further  into  the 
distance,  and  another  day — the  first  of  the  week — is 
selected   for  very  special   but  very  different  regard. 
But  what,  perhaps,  surprises  us  most  of  all  is  the 
absence  of  any  trace  of  such  a  law  as  was  imposed 
upon  the  Jews  at  Sinai  being  laid  upon  the  Gentile 
converts,  in  regard  either  to  the  seventh  or  any  other 
day  of  the  week.     On  the  contrary,  there  is  an  un- 
mistakable annulling  of  the  ancient  Sabbath ;  when 
it  is  not  ignored,  it  is  deliberately  set  on  one  side. 
Thus,  e.g.,  at  the  famous  '  Council  of  Jerusalem,'  when 
the  apostles  and  elders  had  come  together  to  consider 
the  relation  of  the  Gentile  Christians  to  the  law  of 
Moses,  which  some  desired  to  bind  upon  them  in  its 
entirety,  this  was  the  decision   unanimously  arrived 
at  and  transmitted  to  the  brethren   of  the   Gentile 
churches  in  Antioch,  Syria,  and  Cilicia :  '  It  seemed 
good  to  the  Holy  Ghost  and  to  us,  to  lay  upon  you 
no  greater  burden  than  these  necessary  things  ;  that 
ye  abstain  from  things  sacrificed  to  idols,  and  from 
blood,  and  from  things  strangled,  and  from  fornica- 
tion ;   from  which  if  ye  keep  yourselves,  it  shall  be 
well  with  you.'     Yet  in  this  all-important  judgment, 
in  which  the  Holy  Ghost  Himself  is  claimed  as  an 
assessor,  and  the  sole  purpose  of  which  was  to  state 
the  points  in  which  the  Gentile  Christians  were  re- 
quested to  have  regard  to  the  scruples  of  their  Jewish 
brethren,  there  is,  as  we  see,  not  one  word  of  reference 
to  the  ancient  Sabbath.      That  is  what  I  mean  by 


84  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

ignoring  the  Sabbath.  Elsewhere,  as  I  have  said,  it 
is  distinctly  annulled.  Take,  eg.^  the  words  from 
Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  which  I  have  already- 
quoted:  '  One  man  esteemeth  one  day  above  another: 
another  esteemeth  every  day  alike.  Let  each  man  be 
fully  assured  in  his  own  mind.'  '  I  am  afraid  of  you,' 
the  Apostle  wrote  to  the  Galatians.  Why?  '  Ye  ob- 
serve  days'  [Sabbaths,  that  is],  'and  months,  and 
seasons,  and  years.'  Or,  if  this  be  not  sufficient, 
read  this  from  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  :  *  Let  no 
man  judge  you  in  meat,  or  in  drink,  or  in  respect  of 
a  feast  day,  or  a  new  moon,  or  a  sabbath  day :  which 
are  a  shadow  of  the  things  to  come.'  Conjuring 
with  texts  has  sometimes  produced  very  astonishing 
doctrinal  results ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the 
cleverest  jugglery  can  explain  away  the  significance 
of  statements  like  these  ;  and  if  we  accept  St.  Paul 
as  an  authoritative  interpreter  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ, 
these  words  ought  to  be  to  us  the  end  of  all  contro- 
versy. 

Moreover,  the  idea  of  one  day  in  seven  set  apart 
as  holy  unto  the  Lord  is  essentially  a  Jewish  rather 
than  a  Christian  idea.  The  same  idea,  in  other  forms, 
meets  us  frequently  in  Judaism.  Thus  we  have  the 
holy  nation,  the  holy  tribe,  the  holy  man,  the  holy 
place,  and  so  forth.  And  the  meaning  was  that  God 
claims  all  our  life.  '  Consecrated  men,  consecrated 
property,  consecrated  space,  consecrated  time,  de- 
clared that  God  still  claimed  the  world  as  His  own. 


THE   FOURTH   COMMANDMENT  85 

and  that  in  all  the  provinces  of  human  life  He  insisted 
on  being  recognized  as  Lord  of  all.'  Just  as  a  land- 
owner, over  whose  property  the  public  are  allowed  to 
make  a  way,  will  sometimes  close  it  during  one  day  in 
the  year  that  thereby  he  may  show  that  the  land  is 
his  every  day,  so  God  decreed  that  one  day  should 
be  set  apart  for  Him,  that  men  might  learn  that  to 
Him  not  one  but  all  our  days  belong.^  When  Christ 
came  the  larger  truth  was  plainly  taught ;  therefore  that 
which  was  designed  to  lead  the  way  towards  it,  which 
was  in  its  very  nature  only  provisional  and  temporary, 
itself  passed  away.  The  Sabbath  was,  as  Paul  said, 
*a  shadow  of  the  things  to  come,'  and  when  that 
which  was  perfect  had  come,  that  which  was  in  part 
was  done  away. 

It  is  sometimes  sought  to  parry  the  force  of  these 
conclusions  by  urging  that  the  Sabbath  was  instituted, 
not  at  Sinai,  but  at  the  Creation,  and  that  therefore 
its  obligation  is  unaffected  by  the  passing  away  of 
the  Mosaic  law.  In  reply  to  this,  there  are  two  things 
to  be  said.  In  the  first  place,  traces  of  the  existence 
of  a  weekly  Sabbath  before  the  Exodus  are  so  ex- 
tremely uncertain  that  they  can  scarcely  be  said  to 
exist  at  all.  Of  none  of  the  patriarchs  do  we  read 
that  they  remembered  the  Sabbath  day  to  keep  it 
holy.  And  though  of  course  we  hear  of  'weeks' 
long   before   the    giving    of    the   law   at   Sinai,   the 

^  The  illustration  is  borrowed,  I  think,  from  one  of  Robertson's 
Sermons. 


S6  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

division  of  time  into  periods  of  seven  days  is  one 
thing,  the  observance  of  one  of  them  as  a  sacred  day 
or  day  of  rest  is  another  and  altogether  different 
thing,  and  of  this  there  is  no  certain  trace  till  after 
the  Exodus.  And  even  though  there  were — and  this 
is  the  second  fact  to  be  named — it  is  difficult  to  see 
how  it  could  affect  the  question  under  discussion. 
For  if  Christianity  superseded  Judaism,  much  more 
did  it  supersede  all  that  went  before  Judaism. 

And  besides  all  this,  setting  aside  for  the  moment 
all  consideration  of  what  he  ought  to  do,  as  a  plain 
matter  of  fact  no  Christian  does  observe  the  Fourth 
Commandment.  The  commandment  bade  the  Jews 
keep  holy  the  seventh  day  of  the  week  ;  we  keep 
holy  the  first.  The  commandment  said,  *  In  it  thou 
shalt  not  do  any  work,'  and  when  it  said  that  it 
meant  it ;  we  read  in  one  place  of  a  man  who  was 
stoned  for  gathering  sticks  on  the  Sabbath  day. 
But  not  so  do  any  of  us  observe  the  Lord's  Day, 
neither  do  we  fear  that  such  non-observance  will  be 
visited  with  penalties  so  dread.  And  still  further, 
the  day  to  which  we  pay  special  regard  is  to  us  com- 
memorative of  events  wholly  different  from  those  of 
which  the  weekly  Sabbath  reminded  the  pious  Jew. 
How  then,  in  face  of  all  this,  is  it  possible  for  us  to 
declare  that  the  Sabbath  of  the  Jews  is  still  binding 
upon  us  to-day  ? 


THE   FOURTH   COMMANDMENT  87 

II 

Then  has  the  Fourth  Commandment  no  longer 
any  meaning  for  us  ?  What  is  the  relation  of  the 
Sabbath  that  has  passed  to  the  weekly  Day  of  Rest 
that  still  remains,  and  how  is  the  observance  of  this 
latter  day  to  be  maintained  and  defended?  I  am 
sorry  to  have  spent  so  long  in  what  will  appear  to 
be  merely  negative  and  destructive  criticism  ;  but  it 
was  necessary  to  clear  the  ground  in  order  to  answer 
these  questions,  and  to  build  up  the  truth  as  it  is 
in  the  New  Testament.  Certainly,  the  command- 
ment has  a  meaning  for  us  to-day  ;  and  there  is  a 
very  manifest  relation  between  the  Jewish  Sabbath 
and  the  Christian  Sunday,  though  the  latter  is  not 
fenced  about  by  the  restrictions  which  protected  the 
former. 

Very  interesting  is  it  to  note  how  the  observance  of 
the  Lord's  Day  sprang  into  existence.  It  was  not 
a  creation,  but  a  growth,  and  in  the  New  Testament 
we  can  watch  it  growing.  It  was  not  the  outcome  of 
a  definite  command,  as  the  Sabbath  before  it,  had 
been,  but  a  response  to  the  conscious  needs  of  the 
early  Christian  Church.  At  first,  and  for  a  little 
while,  the  believers  would  observe  the  Sabbath,  as 
had  been  their  wont ;  when  exactly  the  practice 
ceased  we  cannot  tell ;  probably  it  died  out  gradually 
as  did,  e.g.^  their  attendance  at  the  services  of  the 
Temple.     In  the  case  of  the  Gentile  Christians,  as 


88  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

we  have  already  seen,  the  law  of  the  Sabbath  was 
never  imposed  at  all.  Meanwhile,  another  influence 
was  at  work  among  Jews  and  Gentiles  alike.  There 
might  be  no  imperative  without  bidding  them  to  keep 
holy  the  seventh  day,  but  there  was  an  imperative 
within  that  called  them  to  worship,  to  prayer,  and  to 
fellowship.  They  had,  moreover,  from  Judaism  ready 
to  their  hand  the  conception  of  a  weekly  da}^  of  rest ; 
what  then  more  natural  than  that,  fixing  on  the  day 
which  was  to  them  the  day  of  days,  the  first  day  of 
the  week,  the  day  on  which  our  Lord  rose  from  the 
dead,  they  should  pay  to  it  something  of  the  special 
regard  that,  under  Judaism,  had  been  paid  to  the 
seventh,  and  separating  themselves  from  their  ordi- 
nary duties,  should  give  themselves  wholly  to  prayer 
and  the  Word  ? 

Now,  obviously,  there  is  nothing  in  all  this  to  con- 
stitute a  command  definite  with  the  definiteness  of 
the  Fourth  Commandment.  Yet  we  need  have  no 
shadow  of  misgiving  that  in  following  in  the  foot- 
steps of  the  first  disciples  we  are  acting  in  perfect 
harmony  with  the  will  of  God.  People  who  are 
never  satisfied  unless  they  can  quote  chapter  and 
verse  for  all  they  believe  and  do  will  doubtless  sigh 
for  the  sharp  decisiveness  of  the  language  of  the 
Decalogue.  But  such  a  spirit  is  the  sign  of  a  little 
faith.  Is  not  God  the  Holy  Spirit  still  in  His  Church 
to  guide  it  into  all  truth  ?  Is  there  one  who  knows 
what  the  observance  of  the  Lord's  Day  has  been  to 


THE  FOURTH   COMMANDMENT  89 

US,  and  who  will  ask  himself  where  we  should  have 
been  without  it,  who  can  yet  doubt  for  one  moment 
that  it  is  of  God  ?  Has  it  come  to  this,  that  we  can 
only  hear  God's  voice  in  the  stern  '  Thou  shalt  not ' 
of  Mount  Sinai,  and  not  when  He  speaks  to  us 
through  the  long  years  of  the  Church's  history? 
When  any  institution  of  the  Church  can  claim  the 
manifest  blessing  of  the  Most  High,  anxiety  about 
title-deeds  is  want  of  faith  in  God. 

Moreover,  has  God  not  given  us,  once  for  all,  a 
clear  revelation  of  His  will  in  this  matter  in  the 
Fourth  Commandment  itself?  To  say,  as  I  have 
said,  that  the  Jewish  Sabbath  has  passed  away  is  not 
to  place  the  command  to  keep  it  holy  on  the  same 
level  as,  say,  the  command  to  abstain  from  shell-fish, 
or  to  practise  the  rite  of  circumcision.  Else  how 
comes  it  that  this  commandment  has  a  place  among 
the  permanent  moral  laws  of  the  Decalogue  ?  The 
Sabbath  was  'a  shadow  of  the  things  to  come/ 
True,  but  beneath  its  passing  form  there  lay  an 
eternal  truth,  and  that  permanent  element  of  good 
passing  over  into  the  Christian  Sunday  has  been  by 
it  secured  to  all  mankind. 


HI 

Now  will  become  manifest  the  grounds  on  which 
we  plead  for  the  observance  of  the  weekly  Day  of 
Rest.      It  is  a  great  social  institution  which  provides 


90  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

for  man  his  needed  physical  rest ;  and  it  is  a  great 
spiritual  privilege  which  secures  to  him,  what  he 
needs  not  less,  the  opportunity  for  religious  worship 
and  spiritual  culture.  It  is  of  perpetual  obligation, 
because  it  ministers  to  deep  necessities  which  are 
themselves  perpetual. 

Of  the  value  of  the  Christian  Sunday  as  a  social 
institution  it  is  hardly  necessary,  at  this  time  of  day, 
to  speak.  On  that  point  the  verdict  of  history  has 
been  given,  and  men  of  all  sects  and  parties  are 
agreed.  In  a  letter  written  a  few  years  ago,  *at 
the  end  of  a  laborious  public  career,'  Mr.  Gladstone 
stated  that  to  his  constant  observance  of  the  Christian 
Day  of  Rest  he  attributed  in  great  part  the  prolonga- 
tion of  his  life  and  the  preservation  of  the  faculties 
he  still  possessed.  John  Bright  once  said  in  the 
House  of  Commons  that  '  the  stability  and  character 
of  our  country,  and  the  advancement  of  our  race, 
depend  very  largely  on  the  mode  in  which  the  Day 
of  Rest,  which  seems  to  have  been  specially  adapted  to 
the  needs  of  mankind,  shall  be  used  and  observed.' 
And  Lord  Macaulay — to  make  one  more  quotation — 
speaking  in  the  same  place,  said  :  *  We  are  not  poorer, 
but  richer,  because  we  have,  through  many  ages, 
rested  from  our  labour  one  day  in  seven.  That  day 
is  not  lost.  While  industry  is  suspended,  while  the 
plough  lies  in  the  furrow,  while  the  Exchange  is 
silent,  while  no  smoke  ascends  from  the  factory,  a 
process  is  going  on  quite  as  important  to  the  wealth 


THE   FOURTH   COMMANDMENT  91 

of  nations  as  any  process  which  is  performed  on 
more  busy  days.  Man,  the  machine  of  machines, 
the  machine  compared  with  which  all  the  contriv- 
ances of  the  Watts  and  Arkwrights  are  worthless,  is 
repairing  and  winding  up,  so  that  he  returns  to  his 
labours  on  the  Monday  with  clearer  intellect,  with 
livelier  spirits,  with  renewed  corporal  vigour.  Never 
will  I  believe  that  what  makes  a  population  stronger, 
and  healthier,  and  wiser,  and  better,  will  ultimately 
make  it  poorer.' 

It  would  be  easy  enough  to  multiply  testimonies  of 
this  sort ;  but  our  peril  to-day  lies  not  so  much  in  the 
encroaching  of  the  hours  of  labour  as  in  the  inroads 
of  the  pleasure-seeker  eager  for  the  multiplication  of 
the  forms  of  public  amusement.  I  observe  that  a  dis- 
tinguished clergyman  in  the  West  End  of  London 
recently  told  his  congregation  that  if,  after  joining  in 
worship,  they  chose  to  refresh  themselves  by  play- 
ing *  any  game  that  is  lawful  on  any  day,'  so  long  as 
it  did  not  involve  the  employment  of  others,  they 
were  guilty  neither  of  a  social  nor  of  a  religious 
offence.  Perhaps  not ;  yet  it  does  appear  to  me 
that,  as  things  are  with  us  just  now,  such  a  bit  of 
advice  might  well  have  been  omitted.  Already  the 
mania  for  sport  has  grown  to  be  like  a  fever  in  our 
blood,  and  if  the  hours  of  Sunday  are  only  to  be  so 
much  added  fuel  to  the  flame,  some  of  us  will  be 
tempted  to  wish  that  they  might  be  denied  to  us  for 
a  time  till  we  have  come  to  a  calmer  and  a  wiser 


92  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

mood.  Some  persons  are  never  weary  of  sneering 
at  what  they  call  *  the  insufferable  dulness  of  the 
Scotch  Sabbath '  ;  and  when  you  are  as  ignorant  as 
many  of  these  self-appointed  censors  of  our  Northern 
ways  are,  nothing  is  so  easy  as  to  sneer.  But  if 
the  choice  has  to  be  made  between  Puritan  over- 
precision,  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  laxity  'which, 
in  many  parts  of  the  Continent,  has  marked  the  day 
from  other  days  only  by  a  more  riotous  worldliness, 
and  a  more  entire  abandonment  of  the  whole  com- 
munity to  amusement,'  ^  on  the  other,  then  I  for  one 
shall  hold  up  both  hands  for  the  Scotch  Sabbath. 
As  I  have  said  before,  '  a  wide  and  rapid  extension  of 
the  provision  for  public  amusement  will  inevitably 
mean  in  the  long-run  more  work  for  those  who  have 
already  too  much  work  to  do,'^  and  let  working  men 
and  women  remember — for  the  question  touches  no 
one  so  nearly  as  it  touches  them — that  not  only  in 
the  book  of  Moses,  but  in  the  book  of  human  nature, 
is  it  written,  *  Six  days  shalt  thou  labour  and  do  all 
thy  work.' 

And  if  man  needs  one  day  in  seven  for  physical 
rest,  not  less  does  he  need  it  for  spiritual  restoration 
and  soul-culture.  Mankind's  great  want  just  now,  as' 
Hawthorne  says  somewhere,  is  sleep.  'The  world 
should  recline  its  vast  head  on  the  first  convenient 

1  F.  W^.  Robertson. 

2  See  a  brief  discussion  of  the  Sabbath  question  in  the  Author's 
Table  Talk  of  /esus. 


THE   FOURTH   COMMANDMENT  93 

pillow,  and  take  an  age-long  nap.  It  has  gone 
distracted  through  a  morbid  activity.'  O  the  sick 
hurry  of  our  modern  life,  that  leaves  us  no  leisure  to 
grow  wise  !  That  bitter  French  epitaph,  *  Born  a  man 
and  died  a  grocer,'  says  all  there  is  to  say  about  the 
lives  of  multitudes. 

'  The  world  is  too  much  with  us  ;  late  and  soon, 
Getting  and  spending,  we  lay  waste  our  powers.' 

Therefore,  just  because  the  world  is  so  much  with  us, 
just  because  we  are  *  by  thronging  duties  pressed,'  the 
more  resolute  must  we  be  to  push  the  world  back 
from  us,  and  to  shut  and  bolt  the  door  against  it. 
Ah,  brethren,  I  tell  you,  these  crowded,  bustling  days 
would  soon  trample  out  of  our  lives  all  that  makes  us 
kin  to  God  if  we  had  not  the  silent  spaces  of  our 
Sabbaths  wherein  the  soul  may  think  and  pray  and 
grow ! 

And  when  once  we  have  lifted  this  Sabbath 
question  to  that  level,  we  shall  cease  to  vex  either 
our  own  souls  or  the  souls  of  our  ministers  with  the 
little  nibbling  interrogations  of  a  petty  casuistry :  is 
it  wrong  to  ride  in  a  tram-car,  or  to  read  a  novel,  or 
to  visit  friends,  or  to  do  on  the  Sabbath  day  any  of 
the  many  things  concerning  which  some  people  love 
to  be  for  ever  asking  questions  ?  For  my  own  part,  I 
decline  to  discuss  these  matters  or  to  make  rules  for 
anybody  but  myself.  I  have  read  of  a  good  Bishop 
of  the  time  of  James  I.  who,  when  he  was  asked 
whether  ladies  might  on  Sundays  employ  their  hands 


94  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

in  knotting  (something  like  what  we  call  '  netting'), 
he  replied  with  purposeful  ambiguity,  '  They  may 
{k)not'  The  wise  old  man  was  right.  Let  us  rise  to 
the  true  conception  of  the  Lord's  Day,  and  questions 
like  these  will  never  be  asked,  or  will  answer  them- 
selves. We  are  not  under  law,  but  under  grace. 
The  Sabbath  is  not  so  much  an  obligation  as  a 
privilege;  it  is  not  a  tax  which  God  levies,  it  is  a  free 
gift  which  He  bestows.  So  let  us  think  of  it,  so  let  us 
receive  it,  and  our  Sabbaths  will  become  to  us  also 
'  a  delight,  the  holy  of  the  Lord,  honourable.' 


THE    FIFTH    COMMANDMENT 


Honour  thy  father  and  thy  mother  :  that  thy  days  may  be  long  upon 
the  land  which  the  Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee.  '—Exodus  xx.  12. 


THE  FIFTH  COMMANDMENT 

The  position  of  this  commandment  in  the  Decalogue 
arrests  our  attention  at  once.  It  has  often  been 
pointed  out  that  the  Ten  Commandments  are  a  kind 
of  summary  of  our  duty  to  God  and  to  man.  But 
now  it  would  appear  that  they  were  originally 
divided,  not  as  we  are  accustomed  to  see  them, 
but  into  two  tables  of  five  commandments  each ; 
so  that  the  Fifth  Commandment  was  regarded  as 
belonging,  not  to  the  second  table,  which  sets  forth 
our  duty  to  man,  but  rather  to  the  first,  which  sets 
forth  our  duty  to  God.  The  fact  is  not  without 
significance,  and  may  serve  to  emphasize  for  us  the 
sacredness  and  importance  of  this  commandment. 
In  the  years  of  childhood  parents  are  to  their 
children  in  the  place  of  God  ;  they  are  His  vice- 
gerents, clothed  with  His  authority ;  the  family  is 
I-Iis  institution.  Disobedience  to  parents,  therefore, 
is  not  simply  a  sin  against  man  ;  it  is  even  more 
a  sin  against  God,  by  whose  will  their  authority 
is  exercised.  Even  the  ancients  seem  to  have  had 
some  glimpse  of  that  truth  when  they  called  filial 
love  by  the  beautiful  name  of '  piety,' 

G 


98  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

A  further   fact  which  invests  this  commandment 
with    special    dignity    is    referred    to    by    St.    Paul  : 
*  Honour   thy   father   and    mother,'  he   says,  *  which 
is  the  first  commandirie^it  with  promise!     The   pro- 
mise is  this :    '  That   thy  days    may  be   long  upon 
the   land   which    the    Lord    thy   God   giveth    thee.' 
But  what   does   the  promise   mean?     Is   it   simply 
a   promise   of  long   life   to   the   individual  ?     So   it 
is  often  understood  ;  and,  instances  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding,   I   see  no  insuperable  difficulty  in 
the  way  of  adopting  such  an  interpretation.     It  will 
hardly   be   questioned    that,    speaking    generally,   a 
life   disciplined   by   habits   of  order   and  obedience 
will    not   so    soon    wear   itself  out    as   a  life  which 
knows  no  restraint,  and  in  which  outbursts  of  reck- 
less  lawlessness    are   wholly   unchecked.     And   yet 
I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  this  is  what  the  promise 
means.     Remember  that  in  that  early  time  anything 
like  an  organized  national  life  can  scarcely  be  said 
to  have  existed.     Everything  centred  in  the  family  ; 
it  was  the  keystone  of  the  arch  ;   whatever  struck 
at  its  authority  imperilled  the  very  existence  of  the 
whole  slender  social   fabric.     When,  therefore,   God 
said,  *  Honour  thy  father  and  thy  mother,  that  thy 
days  may  be  long  upon  the  land  which  the   Lord 
thy   God  giveth  thee,'   what   He   meant  to   declare 
was  that  submission  to  parental  authority  was  not 
merely   the   guarantee   of  individual   long   life,  but 
the  surest  safeguard  of  national  stability  and  well- 


THE   FIFTH   COMMANDMENT  99 

being.  Certainly  the  whole  question  is  well  worthy 
of  consideration  from  that  point  of  view  to-day ; 
and  if  this  suggested  interpretation  be  the  true  one, 
it  adds  immensely  to  our  sense  of  the  importance  of 
this  commandment. 


And  now  if,  with  thoughts  like  these,  we  turn 
to  the  Scriptures — Old  and  New  Testaments  alike — 
we  shall  find  this  impression  of  the  sacredness  of 
filial  duty  deepening  with  every  re-reading.  Almost 
the  first  curse  pronounced  in  the  Bible  is  spoken 
against  Ham,  who  revealed  the  shame  of  his  father 
Noah  ;  and  the  echoes  of  that  curse  reverberate 
throughout  the  whole  Book.  '  Cursed  be  he,'  says 
the  Book  of  Deuteronomy,  'that  setteth  light  by 
his  father  or  his  mother  ! '  '  The  eye  that  mocketh 
at  his  father,'  thunders  Agur,  the  son  of  Jakeh,  '  and 
despiseth  to  obey  his  mother,  the  ravens  of  the  valley 
shall  pick  it  out,  and  the  young  eagles  shall  eat  it' 
On  the  one  hand  we  have  Joseph,  the  type,  not 
only  of  youthful  chastity,  but  of  filial  piety :  '  Ye 
shall  tell  my  father,'  he  said  to  his  brethren,  'of 
all  my  glory  in  Egypt  and  all  that  ye  have  seen' 
— as  though  his  own  cup  of  happiness  could  never 
be  filled  to  the  brim  until  his  old  father  Jacob  had 
tasted  it  with  him  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  Absalom 
stands  the  mournful  chief  of  those  who  bring  down 


100  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

their  fathers'  grey  hairs  with  sorrow  to  the  grave. 
In  all  literature,  sacred  or  profane,  are  there  any 
words  that  so  go  to  our  hearts  as  the  piercing  cry  of 
David  over  his  twice-dead  son  :  *  O  my  son  Absalom, 
my  son,  my  son  Absalom  !  would  God  I  had  died 
for  thee,  O  Absalom,  my  son,  my  son  !  '  And  to 
this  day,  it  is  said,  each  Jewish  child,  as  he  passes  by 
the  traditional  tomb  of  Absalom  in  the  Valley  of 
Jehoshaphat,  *  is  taught  to  spit  at  it  and  hurl  a  con- 
tumelious stone  at  the  resting-place  of  the  rebellious 
son.'  And  let  every  young  'Rechabite'  to-day  re- 
member that  the  first  Rechabites  won  their  blessing 
from  God  because  they  hearkened  to  the  command- 
ments of  their  father  Jonadab. 

Not  less  impressive  is  the  witness  of  the  New 
Testament.  To  children  Paul  writes— and  this  is 
the  only  word  which  he  addresses  directly  to  them 
— '  Children,  obey  your  parents  in  the  Lord  :  for  this 
is  right ' ;  and  one  count  in  that  terrible  indictment 
which  he  brings  in  the  first  chapter  of  his  letter 
to  the  Romans  against  the  Gentiles  is  that  they  were 
'  disobedient  to  parents,  without  natural  affection.' 

Again,  v/hen  the  rich  young  ruler  came  to  Jesus 
saying,  *  Good  Master,  what  shall  I  do  that  I  may 
inherit  eternal  life  ? '  Christ  answered  by  quoting 
some  of  the  commandments,  and  among  them  this : 
*  Honour  thy  father  and  mother.'  Never  did  the  fires 
of  His  indignation  burn  with  a  fiercer  heat  than 
when  He  denounced  the  heartless  quibbling  of  the 


THE   FIFTH   COMMANDMENT  lOI 

Rabbis,  who  suffered  a  man  under  cover  of  a  religious 
imposture  to  escape  his  obligations  as  a  son.  Such 
an  one  had  only  to  say  of  all  or  any  of  his  worldly 
possessions,  '  It  is  Corban '  {i.e.  given  to  God),  and 
though  the  vow  remained  unfulfilled  until  the  day  of 
his  death,  a  destitute  parent  had  no  claim  upon  him. 
*Ye  hypocrites,'  said  Jesus,  'well  did  Isaiah  prophesy 
of  you,  saying,  This  people  honoureth  Me  v/ith  their 
lips,  but  their  heart  is  far  from  Me.'  And,  as  if  this 
were  not  enough,  behind  the  words  of  Mary's  Son, 
like  a  great  sounding-board  to  fling  them  forth  to  the 
world,  are  the  thirty  years  He  spent  in  Nazareth 
subject  unto  His  parents.  Have  we  young  men  and 
women  who  call  ourselves  Christians  pondered  as  we 
ought  the  fact  that,  apart  from  the  incident  in  the 
Temple,  the  only  thing  we  know  of  Jesus  during 
thirty  out  of  the  thirty-three  years  of  His  earthly 
life  is  that  He  kept  the  Fifth  Commandment  ? 


II 

There  is,  I  think,  a  special  call  to  emphasize  this 
commandment  to-day,  in  view  of  a  combination 
of  circumstances  tending  to  elbow  the  old-fashioned 
virtue  of  honour  to  parents  into  the  background. 

In  certain  quarters  a  deliberate  attempt  is  being 
made  to  break  up  the  institution  of  the  family  as 
it  exists  amongst  us  at  present.  Some  Socialist 
writers — among  them,  I   regret  to  say,  the  late  Mr. 


102  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

William  Morris — do  not  hesitate  to  tell  us  that 
while  *it  is  reasonable  to  feel  tenderness  for  the 
persons  who  have  taken  the  pains  of  cherishing 
us  in  our  helplessness,  and  to  wish  to  pay  them 
back  with  some  little  kindness  when  we  no  longer 
need  that  care/  it  is  unjust  and  absurd  that  we 
should  continue  to  bear  the  obligations  that  hitherto 
religion  and  custom  have  united  to  lay  upon  us. 
That  is  a  question  which  just  now  I  must  decline  to 
discuss.  All  I  will  say  is  this,  that  if  Socialism  ally 
itself  with  doctrines  of  that  sort,  good-bye  once  and 
for  ever,  in  our  land  at  least,  to  all  its  dreams  of 
a  reconstructed  society !  There  are  postulates  in  the 
world  of  morals  as  there  are  in  the  world  of  mathe- 
matics, things  that  we  do  not  discuss,  but  take  for 
granted,  and  the  sacredness  of  Home  is  one  of 
them. 

But,  apart  from  deliberate  attacks  such  as  this, 
not  a  few  of  the  social  conditions  of  life  to-day  are 
full  of  peril  to  the  home,  and  especially  to  that 
spirit  of  reverence  to  parents  which  this  command- 
ment enjoins.  Mr.  Barrie  puts  his  finger  on  one 
of  these  in  his  beautiful  book,  Margaret  Ogilvy^ 
when,  speaking  of  the  changes  that  have  come  to 
pass  in  his  own  native  Thrums,  he  says,  'With  so 
many  of  the  family,  young  mothers  among  them, 
working  in  the  factories,  home-life  is  not  so  beauti- 
ful as  it  was.  So  much  of  what  is  great  in  Scotland 
has  sprung  from  the  closeness  of  the  family  ties ; 


THE   FIFTH   COMMANDMENT  103 

it  is  there,  I  sometimes  fear,  my  country  is  being 
struck.'  The  readiness,  too,  with  which  boys  and 
girls  scarcely  in  their  'teens,  nowadays  become 
wage-earners  often  creates  a  kind  of  false  independ- 
ence which  is  a  very  bad  atmosphere  for  filial 
respect  to  flourish  in.  And  then  our  boarding- 
school  system,  with  all  its  advantages,  has  this 
grave  disadvantage,  that  it  takes  children  away, 
during  their  most  impressionable  years,  from  the 
direct  personal  influence  of  their  parents,  and  renders, 
I  will  not  say  impossible,  but  in  many  cases  ex- 
tremely difficult,  the  full  exercise  of  love's  rightful 
authority.  And  when  to  all  this  we  add  that  spirit 
of  lawlessness,  of  revolt  against  authority  in  all  its 
forms,  so  characteristic  of  the  present  day,  and  a 
solvent  more  powerful  than  any  of  the  facts  which  I 
have  named,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  these  changed 
conditions  of  life,  if  they  be  not  carefully  watched, 
may  in  the  end  undermine  those  habits  of  submission 
and  obedience  which,  in  their  right  place,  are  so 
essential  to  the  building  up  of  a  true,  strong,  and 
noble  character. 

These,  then,  are  some  of  the  circumstances  which 
seem  to  make  needful  to-day  a  re-emphasis  of  this 
ancient  law.  I  shall  be  told,  perhaps,  that  the 
commandment  has  its  application  to  fathers  and 
mothers  as  well  as  to  children.  That  is  true,  and 
St  Paul  having  written,  *  Children,  obey  your  parents 
in  the  Lord,'  turns  straightway  to  their  parents, '  And, 


104  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

ye  fathers,  provoke  not  your  children  to  wrath.' 
But  it  is  not  to  these  that  I  wish  specially 
to  speak  just  now,  nor  yet  to  very  young  chil- 
dren, but  rather  to  5/oung  men  and  women  still 
in  their  'teens,  or  only  just  out  of  them  ;  and  they, 
I  trust,  will  grant  me  the  apostolic  liberty  of  using 
great  plainness  of  speech. 


Ill 

What  is  meant  by  'honouring'  father  and  mother? 
No  exact  definition  need  be  attempted  ;  but  in  all 
worthy  '  honouring '  of  our  parents,  these  three 
elements  must  be  included  :  Obedience,  reverence, 
love.  In  that  painful  account  which  John  Stuart 
Mill  gives  us,  in  his  Autobiography,  of  his  early 
education  by  his  father,  he  frankly  confesses  that, 
though  he  was  loyally  devoted  to  his  father,  he  did 
not  love  him.  This  is  probably  one  of  the  cases  in 
which  the  fault  has  to  be  laid  at  the  father's  door 
rather  than  the  son's  ;  but  however  that  may  be,  such 
a  relation  between  parent  and  child  is  but  a  very 
imperfect  realization  of  the  relation  set  forth  in  this 
commandment.  Obedience,  reverence,  love — these 
three,  and  each  of  them  is  necessary. 

(i)  First,  obedience — and  if  this  were  a  children's 
address  this  is  the  word  on  which  I  should  lay  the 
emphasis.  But  as  these  words  are  not  meant  for 
them,  let  me   say,   parentheticalh^,  to   their   fathers 


THE   FIFTH   COMMANDMENT  I05 

and  mothers,  that  for  a  little  child  religion  is  summed 
up  in  the  word  obedience ;  to  him  the  Fifth  Com- 
mandment is  the  First  Commandment  and  the  sum 
of  all  the  Ten  Commandments.  You  are  to  your 
children  in  God's  stead,  and  your  word  to  them  must 
be  as  God's  law.  Many  of  us  are  anxious  that  our 
Httle  ones  should  learn  to  say  their  morning  and 
evening  prayer,  to  love  God's  Book,  and  to  delight 
in  the  services  of  God's  house.  And  all  this  is  right 
and  fitting ;  but  again  let  me  remind  you,  that  when 
Paul  writes  to  children  he  says  nothing  of  these 
things,  but  only,  '  Obey  your  parents  in  the  Lord  : 
for  it  is  right ' ;  and  that  all  that  we  know  of  the  boy 
Jesus  is  that  He  went  down  to  Nazareth  with  His 
parents  and  was  subject  unto  them.  For  a  little 
child,  to  obey  is  better  than  to  pray,  and  we  do  our 
children  a  grievous  hurt  when  we  allow  any  display 
of  religious  precocity  or  priggishness  to  even  seem  to 
atone  for  a  lack  of  prompt  and  willing  obedience. 
If  they  give  not  reverence  unto  the  fathers  of  their 
flesh,  how  shall  they  learn  subjection  unto  the  Father 
of  spirits  and  live  ? 

But  when  children  have  grown  to  manhood  and 
womanhood,  obviously  the  duty  of  obedience  is 
modified.  If  children  are  to  be  commanded,  young 
men  and  women  are  rather  to  be  consulted ;  for, 
after  all,  as  some  one  has  said,  fathers  are  not 
captains  in  a  regiment,  neither  are  their  sons  privates 
in  a  company.     It  is  probably  just   here,  in  actual 


I06  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

life,  that  practical  difficulties  most  frequently  arise — 
in  the  case  of  grown-up  sons  and  daughters  still 
living  under  the  parental  roof  I  fear  I  can  contri- 
bute nothing  to  their  solution.  Where  children  are 
grown  up,  let  their  parents  remember  that  they  are 
no  longer  children  ;  and  let  the  grown-up  children 
not  forget  that  their  parents  are  their  parents  still. 
And  though  that  may  sound  a  bit  of  oracular  wisdom, 
as  cheap  and  as  useless  as  such  wisdom  usually  is, 
it  is  all  I  can  say ;  after  all,  where  the  ties  of 
reverence  and  love  are  strong,  there  will  be  few 
difficulties  that  will  not  easily  be  solved. 

(2)  But  whatever  difficulties  may  beset  the  duty 
of  obedience,  respect  and  reverence  are  always  due. 
Yet  it  is  in  this  that  many,  even  of  those  who  love, 
are  found  wanting.  It  is  said  of  the  children  of 
Jonathan  Edwards,  that  when  their  parents  came  into 
the  room  they  all  instinctively  rose  to  their  feet  and 
remained  standing  till  their  parents  were  seated. 
That  is  a  method  of  showing  respect  to  parents 
which  is  now,  I  suppose,  altogether  antiquated. 
But,  for  one,  I  confess  I  like  that  old-world  courtesy 
better  than  some  of  our  modern  ways.  When  a 
youth  who  has  had  a  University  training,  for  which 
his  parents  have  had  to  scrape  and  pinch  and  deny 
themselves,  all  which  they  have  willingly  done,  that 
they  might  give  their  son  a  better  start  in  life  than 
they  had  themselves — when  such  a  youth  speaks  half 
contemptuously  about  *  the  Mater '  or  *  the  Guvnor,' 


THE   FIFTH   COMMANDMENT  10/ 

when  he  affects  to  be  ashamed  of  the  old  folks, 
because,  forsooth,  their  grammar  is  at  fault,  or 
because  they  have  not  learned  all  his  company 
manners,  that  Old  Testament  text  is  not  a  whit 
too  strong  for  my  feelings :  *  Cursed  be  he  that 
setteth  light  by  his  father  or  his  mother ! ' 

None  of  us  had  a  humbler  woman  for  his  mother 
than  was  Margaret  Carlyle,  and  the  cleverest  of 
us  is  not  likely  to  stand  higher  than  did  her  son 
Thomas.  But  do  you  know  that  when  Mr.  Froude 
went  over  Carlyle's  papers,  he  found  amongst  them 
one  endorsed  with  a  trembling  hand,  *  My  last  letter 
to  my  mother '  ?  Let  me  read  you  a  few  sentences 
from  it :  *  My  dear,  good  mother,'  he  began,  '  let  it 
ever  be  a  comfort  to  you,  however  weak  you  are, 
that  you  did  your  part  honourably  and  well  while 
in  strength,  and  were  a  noble  mother  to  me  and  to 
us  all.  I  am  now  myself  grown  old,  and  have  had 
various  things  to  do  and  suffer  for  so  many  years ; 
but  there  is  nothing  I  ever  had  to  be  so  much  thank- 
ful for  as  the  mother  I  had.  That  is  a  truth  which  I 
know  well,  and  perhaps  this  day  again  it  may  be 
some  comfort  to  you.  Yes,  surely,  for  if  there  has 
been  good  in  the  things  I  have  uttered  in  the  world's 
hearing,  it  was  your  voice  essentially  that  was  speak- 
ing through  me ;  essentially  what  you  and  my  brave 
father  meant  and  taught  me  to  mean,  this  was  the 
purport  of  all  I  spoke  and  wrote.  And  if  in  the  few 
years  that  may  remain  to  me  I  am  to  get  any  more 


I08  THE  TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

written  for  the  world,  the  essence  of  it,  so  far  as  it  is 
worthy  and  good,  will  still  be  yours.  May  God 
reward  you,  my  dearest  mother,  for  all  you  have  done 
for  me !  I  never  can.'  It  is  said  that  when  James 
Garfield  was  installed  as  President  of  the  United 
States,  he  insisted  that  his  aged  mother  should  be 
present  at  the  ceremony ;  when  it  was  complete,  in 
the  presence  of  them  all,  he  turned  and  kissed  her< 
withered  cheek.  If  any  man  is  tempted  to  set  lightly 
by  his  father  or  his  mother  because  his  name  has 
been  set  on  high,  let  him  remember  James  Garneld 
and  Thomas  Carlyle. 

(3)  Obedience,  reverence — love.  Of  many  things 
that  might  be  said  concerning  love  to  parents  I  have 
only  time  for  one,  and  I  select  it  because  experience 
has  taught  me  so  often  its  need :  Cultivate  'a  free  and 
spontaneous  expression  of  your  love.  In  that  beauti- 
ful book  of  Mr.  Barrie's,  from  which  I  have  already 
quoted,  he  tells  us  that,  reticent  as  the  Scot  may  be 
outside  his  own  home — in  fact,  '  a  house  with  all  the 
shutters  closed  and  the  door  locked  ' — once  at  home 
he  is  self- revealing  in  the  superlative  degree,  and  the 
feelings  so  long  dammed  up  overflow;  he  has  not 
more  to  give  than  his  neighbours,  but  it  is  bestowed 
upon  a  few  instead  of  being  distributed  among  many; 
he  is  reputed  niggardly,  but  for  family  affection  at 
least  he  pays  in  gold.  Perhaps  that  is  true  of  more 
homes  than  we  think.  Nevertheless,  it  is  an  un- 
doubted  fact  that  in   Enoland   and    Scotland   alike 


THE   FIFTH   COMMANDMENT  109 

we  are  too  much  ashamed  of  the  signs  of  emotion, 
till  often,  for  lack  of  demonstrativeness,  the  feelings 
themselves  are  starved.  I  have  never  once — if  I  may- 
speak  for  myself — reproached  myself  that  I  have 
spoken  too  freely ;  but  a  hundred  times  I  have  done 
so  because  the  gratitude,  the  love,  the  regret  that 
were  at  the  heart  did  not  find  the  right  word  in 
which  to  utter  themselves  ;  and  the  opportunity  passed 
and  the  word  was  never  spoken. 

There  is  a  pretty  story  told  concerning  the  late 
Dr.  Dale.  He  was  travelling,  I  think,  in  the  Colonies. 
Speaking  on  one  occasion  of  the  relation  of  a  pastor 
to  his  congregation,  and  pleading  for  a  freer  recipro- 
city of  feeling  between  them,  he  said  that  he  often  felt 
inclined  to  say  to  his  own  people,  '  If  you  love  me, 
tell  me  so.'  The  little  speech  reached  England 
sooner  than  did  the  speaker,  and  when  some  months 
later  the  doctor  entered  the  hall  in  Birmingham  in 
which  a  'welcome  home.'  had  been  arranged  for 
him,  almost  the  first  object  that  met  his  eyes  was 
a  large  scroll  across  one  end  of  the  building,  '  We 
love  you,  and  we  tell  you  so.'  '  If  you  love  me,  tell 
me  so' — it  is  what  multitudes  are  asking.  Do  not 
say  it  is  a  mean  or  vulgar  desire;  it  is  the  cry  of 
parched  souls  that  are  thirsting  for  love  and  sym- 
pathy. And  perhaps  there  are  none  who  utter  that 
cry  so  often  in  the  silence  as  our  fathers  and 
mothers.  Let  us  love  them,  and  let  us  learn  to  tell 
them  so. 


no  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

IV 

But  what,  it  may  be  asked,  if  our  parents  are 
unworthy  ?  How  can  a  child  '  honour '  a  drunken 
and  dissolute  father  or  mother?  A  very  painful 
story  of  child  life  is  told  in  the  recently  published 
Autobiography  of  Philip  Gilbert  Hamerton,  the  dis- 
tinguished art  critic  and  man  of  letters.  Hamerton's 
mother  died  shortly  after  his  birth  ;  his  father  gave 
way  to  the  wildest  excesses,  and  treated  his  little 
son  with  great  cruelty  ;  he  died  in  a  fit  of  apoplexy, 
brought  on  by  an  outburst  of  ungovernable  passion 
because  his  boy  failed  to  read  an  article  in  the  Times 
to  his  satisfaction.  Under  circumstances  like  these, 
how  can  the  Fifth  Commandment  be  obeyed  ?  Here, 
again,  I  can  only  answer  in  the  most  general  terms. 
Never  let  us  forget  that  golden  saying  of  Savonarola 
to  Romola :  Man  cannot  choose  his  duties.  Our 
parents  may  be  unworthy,  but  they  are  our  parents 
still  ;  our  obligation  to  them  may  be  modified  by 
circumstances,  but  it  remains — it  is  an  obligation 
still.  And,  at  least,  should  so  great  a  calamity 
have  overtaken  us,  and  should  parents  of  ours, 
like  Noah,  have  fallen  into  some  gross  and  terrible 
sin,  let  us  choose,  not  with  Ham  who  revealed,  but 
rather  with  Shem  and  Japheth  who  reverently  hid 
their  father's  shame.  Now,  if  ever,  surely  ours 
should  be  the  love  that  not  only  'beareth'  but 
*  covereth '  all  things.    (See  i  Cor.  xiii.  7,  margin,  R.v.) 


THE   FIFTH   COMMANDMENT  III 

It  may  be  well  to  remind  ourselves  that,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  the  Fifth  is  the  only  one 
of  the  commandments  which  we  cannot  always 
keep.  So  long  as  we  live,  we  may  not  kill,  we 
may  not  steal,  we  may  not  commit  adultery  ; 
but  from  some  of  us  already,  and  from  all  of 
us  soon,  death  has  taken,  or  will  take,  our 
parents,  leaving  us  only  their  memory  to  honour. 
Let  us  take  heed  that  we  are  not  laying  up  for 
ourselves  regrets,  bitter  as  they  will  be  all  unavail- 
ing, against  the  days  to  come.  Every  one  has  heard 
of  Dr.  Johnson  standing  bareheaded  in  the  rain  in 
the  market-place  at  Uttoxeter,  to  do  penance  for 
an  act  of  disobedience  towards  his  father  fifty  years 
before  ;  and  they  tell  how  one  of  our  Scottish  kings, 
James  IV.,  because  once  in  his  boyhood  he  had  stood 
in  arms  against  his  father,  used  in  after  life  to  wear 
an  iron  belt  under  his  robes,  and  every  year  to  that 
belt  he  added  another  link,  that  the  remembrance  of 
his  sin  might  be  the  heavier  upon  him.  Ah,  young 
men  and  young  women !  I  tell  you  there  are  no 
memories  that  can  sting  and  burn  and  rankle  like 
the  memories  of  wrong  we  have  done  to  those  to 
whom  we  owe  our  life. 


There  is  only  one  other  thing  I  want  to  say.     I  have 
already   referred    to    Mr.   Barrie's  Margaret   Ogilvy, 


112  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

and  I  want  to  commend  it  to  you  all  as  the  most 
beautiful  comment  on  the  Fifth  Commandment  that  I 
know.  It  is  a  son's  tribute  to  his  mother,  of  rever- 
ence and  tender  beauty  all  compact.  You  may  think 
me  guilty  of  exaggeration,  but  if  there  is  anything 
quite  like  it  in  English  literature  I  do  not  know  where 
to  find  it.  Ever  since  he  could  remember,  Mr.  Barrie 
tells  us,  his  one  ambition  had  been  to  please  his 
mother.  When  he  was  a  bairn — so  his  mother  used 
to  tell  him  in  after  years — he  saw  nothing  bonny,  he 
never  heard  of  her  setting  her  heart  on  anything, 
but  he  flung  up  his  head,  and  cried,  *  Wait  till  I  'm  a 
man.'  And  when  the  boy  grew  to  be  a  man,  it  was 
to  her  that  the  first  hard-earned  cheques  went.  After 
her  death  he  found  the  envelopes  that  had  con- 
tained them  in  a  box,  with  a  bit  of  ribbon  round 
them.  When  he  began  to  write  books,  it  was  love 
of  her  that  made  him  write,  it  is  she  who  wanders  up 
and  down  through  all  his  pages.  '  In  her  eyes,'  he 
says,  '  I  have  read  all  I  know  and  would  ever  care  to 
write.  For  when  you  looked  into  my  mother's  eyes 
you  knew,  as  if  He  had  told  you,  why  God  sent 
her  into  the  world — it  was  to  open  the  eyes  of  all 
who  looked  to  beautiful  thoughts  ;  and  that  is  the 
beginning  and  end  of  literature.'  And  when,  very 
early,  fame  came  to  the  son,  it  made  no  difference  ; 
there  was  no  one  in  all  the  world  he  cared  for  as  the 
little  old  woman  with  her  thin  wasted  hands  and 
dainty  white   mutch  ;    at   a    single  word   he  would 


THE   FIFTH   COMMANDMENT  II3 

hurry  off  on  a  long  journey  to  see  her,  and  when  he 
was  away  he  was  never  so  busy  that  he  had  not  time 
to  write  her  daily.  *  My  thousand  letters/  he  says, 
'that  she  so  carefully  preserved,  always  sleeping 
with  the  last  beneath  the  sheet,  where  one  was 
found  when  she  died — they  are  the  only  writing 
of  mine  of  which  I  shall  ever  boast.  I  would  not 
there  had  been  one  less,  though  I  could  have  written 
an  immortal  book  for  it'  And  when  the  end  came, 
he  could  look  back  and  say :  '  Everything  I  could 
do  for  her  in  this  life  I  have  done  since  I  was  a  boy ; 
I  look  back  through  the  years,  and  I  cannot  see  the 
smallest  thing  left  undone.  .  .  .  Those  eyes  that  I 
could  not  see  until  I  was  six  years  old  have  guided 
me  through  life,  and  I  pray  God  they  may  remain 
my  only  earthly  judge  to  the  last.' 

'  Happy  he 
With  such  a  mother  !  faith  in  womankind 
Beats  with  his  blood,  and  trust  in  all  things  high 
Comes  easy  to  him,  and  though  he  trip  and  fall, 
He  shall  not  blind  his  soul  with  clay.' 

God  give  us  many  mothers  like  Margaret  Ogilvy, 
and  many  sons  like  James  Matthew  Barrie ! 


H 


THE    SIXTH    COMMANDMENT 


Thou  shalt  do  no  murder.'— Exodus  xx.  13. 


THE  SIXTH  COMMANDMENT 

We  begin  to-day  the  consideration  of  the  second 
half  of  the  Ten  Commandments.  It  has  already- 
been  pointed  out,  in  the  address  on  the  First  Com- 
mandment, that  the  starting-point  of  the  Decalogue 
is  God  :  to  be  right  practically  we  must  be  right 
theologically,  morality  is  based  on  religion.  Now, 
with  the  Sixth  Commandment,  the  opposite  and 
complementary  truth  comes  into  sight  Right 
thoughts  of  God  are  meant  to  issue  in  a  right  relation 
to  our  fellow-men  ;  he  that  loveth  God  must  also 
love  his  neighbour  as  himself  *  If  a  man  say,  I 
love  God,  and  hateth  his  brother,  he  is  a  liar.'  Non- 
Christian  moralists  have  sometimes  had  severe  things 
to  say  concerning  the  immorality  of  so-called  reli- 
gious men  ;  but  if  you  want  to  read  the  sharpest 
condemnation  of  them  that  think  they  are  well-pleas- 
ing to  God  while  their  hearts  are  filled  with  all  malice 
and  bitterness  towards  their  fellow-men,  read  the  Bible. 
Immediately  following,  therefore,  upon  the  Com- 
mandments designed  to  establish  man's  true  relation 
Godward,  come  four  great  laws  for  the  safeguarding 
of  man's  life,  his  home,  his  possessions,  his  character. 

117 


Il8  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

And  finally,  in  the  Tenth  Commandment,  passing 
beyond  overt  acts  of  crime,  the  law  lays  its  hand 
upon  that  evil  in  man's  heart  which  is  the  root  of  so 
much  evil  in  his  life  :  *  Thou  shalt  not  covet' 

Is  it  still  urged  that  the  Decalogue  is  a  rough  and 
imperfect  code  of  human  duty,  that  even  as  a  list  of 
negative  precepts  it  is  far  from  complete  ;  that  there 
is  a  whole  catalogue  of  vices  of  which  it  takes  no 
account  whatever?  Then  again  I  reply,  let  a  man 
set  to  work  to  carry  out  its  precepts,  not  only  in  the 
letter,  but  also  in  the  spirit,  not  only  as  they  were 
first  given  by  Moses,  but  as  they  were  interpreted 
anew  by  Jesus  Christ,  and  above  all,  let  him  lay  to 
heart  the  last  of  the  Commandments,  and  he  will  not 
again  speak  with  any  hasty  disrespect  of  the  morality 
of  Sinai.  At  the  same  time,  it  may  be  readily  granted 
that  there  is  no  attempt  in  the  Decalogue  to  set 
forth  the  whole  duty  of  man.  It  is  not  a  complete 
code,  but  rather — as  Principal  Dykes  has  said — '  the 
first  draft  of  a  code,'  and  the  Ten  Words  are  to  be 
taken  '  as  so  many  titles  or  headings,  under  each  of 
which  you  must  range  a  whole  section  of  civil  or 
criminal  law.'  Yet  in  so  far  as  this  is  so,  is  it  at  all 
to  be  wondered  at?  If,  as  the  politician  is  never 
weary  of  telling  us,  it  is  impossible  to  legislate  in 
advance  of  public  opinion,  still  more  is  it  necessary, 
in  all  moral  legislation,  to  have  regard  to  the  char- 
acter and  attainments  of  those  for  whom  it  is 
provided.     The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  on  the  lips  of 


THE  SIXTH   COMMANDMENT  II9 

Moses  would  have  been  as  impracticable  as  the 
Decalogue  on  the  lips  of  Christ  would  have  been  in- 
adequate. And  we  have  only  to  think  ourselves 
back  to  the  times  in  which  the  Decalogue  was  given, 
to  realize  what  an  immense  step  was  taken  in  the 
moral  education  of  the  world  when  this  ancient  law 
was  proclaimed  from  Mount  Sinai. 


I 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  consideration  of  the  Sixth 
Commandment,  both  as  we  have  it  here  in  outline, 
and  as  it  is  filled  in  for  us  by  the  later  legislation. 
And  the  same  characteristics  which  we  find  so  often 
in  the  legislative  enactments  of  the  Old  Testament 
— that  large  sanity,  that  clear-sighted  wisdom,  that 
broad  and  even-handed  justice,  which  have  not 
always  received  their  full  meed  of  recognition  at  the 
hands  of  readers  and  critics,  meet  us  here  again  in  the 
provisions  of  the  Jewish  law  for  the  protection  of 
human  life.  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  that  that  law,  in 
all  or  any  of  its  forms,  could  be  transferred  to  our 
own  statute-book  ;  but  the  spirit  which  lies  behind  it 
is  one  of  which  we  can  never  have  too  much,  and  of 
which  we  usually  have  too  little  in  the  legislation  of 
to-day. 

Of  the  Cities  of  Refuge  which  Moses  established 
for  the  manslayer  in  cases  of '  accidental  or  justifiable 
homicide,'  as  we  should  call  them,  it  is  not  necessary 


120  THE  TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

for  me  to  speak.  But  there  were  two  remarkable  pro- 
visions of  the  Jewish  law  of  murder  which  will  illustrate 
what  I  have  just  said,  and  to  which  I  wish  briefly  to 
refer.^  *  It  was  the  custom  among  some  Eastern  races,' 
we  are  told,  '  to  permit  the  avenger  of  the  crime  of 
murder  to  accept  compensation  in  money  instead 
of  inflicting  death  on  the  criminal.'  The  result  was 
obvious :  the  poor  man,  unable  to  buy  himself  off, 
paid  with  his  life  the  penalty  of  a  law  which  the  rich 
man  was  left  free  to  break  almost  with  impunity. 
But  this  the  law  of  Moses  forbade  :  '  Ye  shall  take  no 
ransom ' — so  runs  the  ancient  statute  (Num.  xxxv.  31) 
— *  for  the  life  of  a  manslayer,  which  is  guilty  of  death  : 
but  he  shall  surely  be  put  to  death.'  Is  there  not  a 
principle  here  the  recognition  of  which  we  sometimes 
seek  for  in  vain  in  our  modern  courts  of  justice? 
When,  e.g.,  some  wealthy  scoundrel,  by  the  payment 
of  a  heavy  fine,  which  is  to  him  no  punishment  at  all, 
manages  to  escape  the  term  of  imprisonment  which, 
for  the  same  offence,  is  meted  out  to  a  man  whose 
purse  is  empty,  one  wonders  what  has  become  of  our 
boasted  equality  of  all  men  in  the  eyes  of  the  law. 
Perfect  equality  may  never  be  possible — we  have  no 
scales  of  justice  firm  enough  for  that, — but  a  fuller 
recognition  of  this  principle  of  the  Mosaic  legislation 
might  at  least  bring  us  one  step  nearer  towards  it. 
Again,  in  Exodus  xxi.  28,  29,  we  read :  *  If  an  ox 

^  For  the  substance  of  this  and  the  following  paragraph  I  am  in- 
debted to  Dr.  Dale's  admirable  lecture  on  the  Sixth  Commandment. 


THE  SIXTH   COMMANDMENT  121 

gore  a  man  or  a  woman,  that  they  die,  the  ox  shall 
be  surely  stoned,  and  his  flesh  shall  not  be  eaten ;  but 
the  owner  of  the  ox  shall  be  quit.  But  if  the  ox 
were  wont  to  gore  in  time  past,  and  it  hath  been 
testified  to  his  owner,  and  he  hath  not  kept  him  in, 
but  that  he  hath  killed  a  man  or  a  woman ;  the  ox 
shall  be  stoned,  and  his  owner  also  shall  be  put  to  death! 
Ignoring  the  details,  which  in  no  way  concern  us,  is 
there  not,  underlying  this  law,  a  theory  of  responsibility 
which  would  admit  of  some  very  useful  applications 
to-day  ?  When,  e.g.,  a  man  in  a  fit  of  intoxication 
commits  some  terrible  crime,  the  person  who  sold  to 
him  the  drink  which  caused  the  intoxication  would, 
if  the  principle  of  this  Mosaic  statute  were  adopted, 
be  made  to  share  in  the  consequences  of  his  act  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  this  principle  is  so  far  embodied  in 
the  liquor  laws  of  Canada  and  some  other  of  our 
colonies  that  it  is  therein  provided,  'that  wherever 
any  person  comes  to  his  death  by  suicide  or  other- 
wise during  intoxication,  the  seller  of  the  liquor  that 
caused  the  intoxication  is  liable  to  an  action  for 
damages.' 1  And  eminent  judges  in  our  own  country 
have  more  than  once  expressed  from  the  bench  their 
regret  that  the  law  did  not  allow  them  to  summon 
the  publican,  whose  drink  had  been  the  direct  cause 
of  a  crime,  to  stand  in  the  dock  with  the  prisoner 
and  share  with  him  in  his  punishment.  Take  another 
illustration.      Some  two  or  three  years  ago,  through 

^  See  Chambers's  Encyclopcedia^  art.  '  Liquor  Laws. ' 


122  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

the  blundering  of  a  railway  signalman,  a  terrible 
accident  happened  on  the  main  line  between  Edin- 
burgh and  London.  As  a  consequence,  the  signalman 
was  committed  to  take  his  trial  for  manslaughter. 
But  when  the  trial  came  on  such  evidence  was 
forthcoming  as  to  the  shamefully  long  hours  during 
which,  without  a  break,  the  man  had  been  kept  at  his 
post,  that  the  jury  at  once  acquitted  him.  If  Moses 
had  had  the  making  of  our  laws  it  would  not  have 
been  the  railway  servant,  but  the  railway  directors, 
who  would  have  been  put  upon  their  trial  for  so 
flagrant  a  neglect  of  their  duty  to  their  employees 
and  to  the  public. 

It  is  perhaps  worthy  of  note  that,  in  the  exposition 
of  this  commandment  contained  in  later  enactments 
of  the  Jewish  law,  there  is  nowhere  any  reference  to 
its  application  to  self-destruction.  It  is  a  remarkable 
fact  that,  whereas  suicide  in  all  civilized  countries 
is  said  on  good  authority  to  be  becoming  more 
common  year  by  year,  with  the  Jews  length  of  days 
was  always  counted  among  the  greatest  blessings 
which  a  man  might  desire,  and,  as  Dean  Farrar  has 
pointed  out,  in  all  the  four  thousand  years'  history 
covered  by  the  Old  Testament  there  are  only  three 
recorded  cases  of  self-destruction.  This  is  not  the 
time  nor  the  place  to  discuss  the  change,  significant 
of  many  things  as  it  is ;  but  do  not  let  us  forget 
that,  as  Shakespeare  tells  us,  '  the  Everlasting,'  hath 
'fix'd  His  canon  'gainst  self-slaughter.' 


THE   SIXTH   COMMANDxMENT  1 23 

II 

Reverence  for  human  life  as  a  sacred  thing — this 
was  the  truth  which,  thus  early  in  its  history,  was 
by  this  commandment  implanted  deep  in  the  world's 
heart.  The  truth  may  be  a  truism  to-day,  but  it 
was  not  always  so,  nor  is  it  yet  wholly  so,  except  in 
the  sense  that  a  truism  is  a  forgotten  truth.  '  The 
idea  of  man  as  a  conscious,  rational,  moral  individual, 
of  worth  for  his  own  sake,'  says  Principal  Fairbairn, 
'did  not  exist  in  antiquity  till  it  came  into  being 
through  Israel.'  Life  was  held  of  no  account ; 
murder  was  of  almost  every-day  occurrence.  Why, 
even  in  the  days  of  Jeremiah  men  came  to  worship 
in  the  temple  with  the  stain  of  blood  upon  their 
hands  :  *  Will  ye  steal,  murder^  and  commit  adultery, 
and  swear  falsely  .  .  .  and  (then)  come  to  stand 
before  Me  in  this  house,  which  is  called  by  My  name, 
and  say.  We  are  delivered  :  that  ye  may  do  all  these 
abominations  ? '  '  If  a  man  suffer  as  a  Christian,'  said 
St.  Peter,  writing  to  Christians,  'let  him  not  be 
ashamed  ' ;  but  '  let  none  of  you  suffer  as  a  murderer^ 
or  a  thief,  or  an  evil-doer,  or  as  a  meddler  in  other 
men's  matters.'  Among  ourselves  it  was  but  yester- 
day that  duelling  was  made  illegal,  and  as  recently 
as  the  last  century  ruthless  laws  '  made  it  a  capital 
crime  to  cut  down  a  cherry-tree,  and  strung  up  twenty 
young  thieves  of  a  morning  in  front  of  Newgate.'^ 

^  See  John  Richard  Green's  Short  History, 


124  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

And  even  yet,  'when  a  Mammonite  mother 
kills  her  babe  for  a  burial  fee,'  and  organized 
societies  are  necessary  to  save  little  children  from 
the  fiendish  cruelty  of  their  inhuman  parents,  the  day 
has  not  come  when  we  no  longer  need  to  proclaim 
this  ancient  law  of  God. 

Nevertheless,  an  immense  change  has  come  even 
within  the  memory  of  living  men.  Only  this  very 
week  I  read  in  the  pages  of  a  London  newspaper  a 
searching  editorial  note  on  the  alleged  cruel  treatment 
of  a  nameless  marine  on  board  one  of  our  guardships^ 
*  We  shall  not  lose  sight  of  this  case'  said  the  writer  as 
he  put  down  his  pen.  And  it  is  that  eager  vigilance 
in  the  cause  of  the  weak  and  the  poor,  that  reverence 
for  the  rights  of  the  meanest  among  the  dumb 
millions  in  our  land,  which  marks  one  of  the  great 
lines  of  cleavage  between  the  old  world  and  the 
new.  The  change,  I  say,  is  an  immense  one ;  what 
has  wrought  it  ?  Many  causes,  doubtless,  have  con- 
tributed ;  but  the  beginning  of  the  new  order  of  things 
is  here  in  the  new  conception  of  the  sacredness  of  life 
which  was  given  to  Israel  by  the  lips  of  Moses.  Our 
magnificent  hospitals  and  infirmaries,  with  their 
countless  appliances  for  the  mitigation  of  human 
suffering,  which  are  among  the  chiefest  glories  of 
our  time,  and  the  great  medical  profession,  with  its 
eager  search  after  knowledge  that  may  enable  it 
to  prolong  life  and  soften  pain,  and  make  death  less 
terrible — this  mighty  tree  of  human  sympathy  and 


THE   SIXTH   COMMANDMENT  12$ 

skill,  whose  branches  fill  the  whole  earth,  and  whose 
leaves  are  for  the  healing  of  the  nations,  is  it  not 
rooted  in  that  reverence  for  human  life  to  which  this 
Sixth  Commandment  gave  such  early  expression, 
and  which  it  has  done  so  much  to  sustain  and 
strengthen  ? 

Ill 

When  from  exposition  we  turn  to  application,  we 
are  met  at  once  by  two  questions  without  a  discussion 
of  which  no  Young  Men's  Debating  Society  syllabus 
used  to  be  considered  complete — I  mean,  Capital 
Punishment  and  War.  The  relation  of  the  Sixth 
Commandment  to  these  venerable  topics — which  is 
all  that  concerns  us  just  now — may  be  stated  in  a 
sentence  or  two.  As  to  the  former,  it  is  clear  that  the 
commandment  did  not  forbid  it.  *  Whoso  sheddeth 
man's  blood,  by  man  shall  his  blood  be  shed ' — so  ran 
the  stern  old  statute ;  and  not  for  the  crime  of  murder 
alone,  but  for  many  other  offences  was  the  extreme 
penalty  of  the  law  inflicted  among  the  Jews.  It  is 
useless,  therefore,  to  appeal  to  the  authority  of  the 
Decalogue  in  our  discussion  of  the  question  of  Capital 
Punishment  to-day ;  the  matter  must  be  settled  on 
quite  other  grounds.  Similarly  in  regard  to  War. 
War  may  be  sometimes  a  stern  necessity  and  duty  ; 
and  only  they  who  are  'drunk  with  the  thin,  sour 
wine  of  a  remorseless  logic '  will  be  able  to  discover 
anything  in  this  commandment  to  forbid  it.     On  the 


126  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

other  hand,  let  us  not  forget — especially  in  view  of 
the  monstrous  statements  recently  made  in  our  city 
by  a  distinguished  military  gentleman  ^ — that  unjust 
wars,  wars  that  are  prompted  by  the  lust  of  empire 
or  commercial  greed,  wars  with  weak  and  half-civilized 
peoples  on  pretexts  that  we  should  never  dare  to 
breathe  if  we  were  treating  with  a  great  European 
power,  wars,  alas  !  such  as  stain  the  latest  pages  of  our 
own  history — such  wars  are  condemned,  not  only  by 
the  Sixth  Commandment,  but  by  every  word  that 
proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God.  And  therein 
is  justified  Hosea  Biglow's  creed,  which,  thank  God,  is 
coming  to  be  the  creed  of  multitudes  who  might  shrink 
from  putting  their  faith  into  his  queer,  quaint  words — 

'  Ez  fer  war,  I  call  it  murder, — 

There  you  hev  it  plain  an'  flat ; 
I  don't  want  to  go  no  furder 

Than  my  Testyment  fer  that ; 
God  hez  said  so  plump  an'  fairly, 

It's  ez  long  ez  it  is  broad. 
An'  you  've  gut  to  git  up  airly 

Ef  you  want  to  take  in  God. 

'Taint  your  eppyletts  an'  feathers 

Make  the  thing  a  grain  more  right ; 
'Taint  a  follerin'  your  bell-wethers 

Will  excuse  ye  in  His  sight ; 
Ef  you  take  a  sword  an'  dror  it 

An  go  stick  a  feller  thru, 
Guv'ment  aint  to  answer  for  it, 

God '11  send  the  bill  to  you.' 


1  The  reference  was  to  an  address  delivered  before  the  members  of 
the  Philosophical  Institution  by  Lord  Wolseley. 


THE   SIXTH   COMMANDMENT  1 27 

This  is  but  one  out  of  many  applications  of  the  com- 
mandment that  are  loudly  called  for  by  our  life  to-day. 
Murder  happily  is  with  us  of  comparatively  rare 
occurrence ;  but  the  meshes  of  man's  law  are  very 
wide,  and  it  may  be  there  are  some  who  would  be 
horror-struck  if  they  were  charged  with  that  crime, 
to  whom,  nevertheless,  God  will  one  clay  have  some- 
thing to  say  concerning  His  law.  *  Though  the  mills 
of  God  grind  slowly,  yet  they  grind  exceeding  small.' 
I  do  not  want  to  speak  wildly,  or  forgetful  of  the 
network  of  circumstances  not  of  their  own  makinsf 
by  which  many  are  bound  so  that  they  cannot  do  the 
thing  they  would.  But  when  I  read  the  life  of  a  man 
like  Lord  Shaftesbury,  and  think  of  the  legalized 
horrors  through  which,  inch  by  inch,  he  fought  his 
desperate  way,  then  unless  my  Bible  is  only  so  much 
waste  paper,  for  them  that  cared  more  for  gold  than 
for  suffering  women  and  children  there  is  a  heavy 
day  of  reckoning  coming. 

*The  child's  sob  in  the  silence  curses  deeper 
Than  the  strong  man  in  his  wrath,' 

and  that  curse  of  the  little  child  has  entered  into  the 
Divine  ear,  to  fall  again  like  nery  hail  upon  the  head 
of  the  oppressor.  When  I  think  of  lives  wasting 
away  in  unsanitary  dwellings  and  workshops,  of  the 
white  slaves  of  England  doomed  to  stagger  on  under 
their  weary  burdens  of  unending  toil  till  at  last  they 
drop  worn  out  into  premature  graves,  and  then  of 
those  who,  like  vultures  fattening  on  human  carrion, 


128  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

are  growing  rich  out  of  the  wretchedness  and  degrada- 
tion of  their  fellows — verily,  if  there  be  a  God  that 
judgeth  in  the  earth,  He  shall  search  out  this  also. 

Ay,  but  if  we  begin  to  speak  of  '  bloodguiltiness ' 
we  shall  need  to  go  on  ;  we  cannot  stop  there.  Did 
you  ever  read  this  ancient  law  from  the  book  of 
Deuteronomy :  '  When  thou  buildest  a  new  house, 
then  thou  shalt  make  a  battlement  for  thy  roof? 
Why  was  that  ?  The  roof  of  an  Eastern  house  was 
flat,  and  if  there  were  no  protection  some  one  walking 
on  it  might  fall  over  and  be  killed ;  therefore,  said 
the  law,  '  thou  shalt  make  a  battlement  for  thy  roof 
that  thou  bring  not  blood  upon  thine  house,  if  any  inan 
fall  from  thence!  Not  for  the  owner's  sake  simply — 
he  might  walk  in  safety, — but  for  the  sake  of  others, 
the  battlement  must  be  built.  You  may  drink  wine 
and  play  cards  and  do  many  things  without  risk  to 
yourself ;  but  before  you  finally  settle  the  matter,  what 
about  your  children  ?  what  about  the  young  men  and 
women  who  visit  at  your  house  ?  will  they  not  need 
the  battlement?  Take  heed  'that  thou  bring  not 
blood  upon  thine  house.'  Or,  listen  to  this  that  God 
spake  unto  Israel  by  His  prophet :  '  If  the  watchman 
see  the  sword  come,  and  blow  not  the  trumpet,  and 
the  people  be  not  warned,  and  the  sword  come,  and 
take  any  person  from  among  them  ;  he  is  taken  away 
in  his  iniquity,  but  his  blood  will  I  require  at  the 
watchman's  hand.'  Every  one  has  somebody  to 
answer  for:  the  minister  his  people,  the  leader  his 


THE   SIXTH   COMMANDMENT  I29 

members,  the  teacher  his  class,  the  parents  their 
children.  Ministers,  leaders,  teachers,  parents,  can 
we  stand  up  and  testify  as  Paul  did  before  the 
Ephesian  elders,  *  I  am  pure  from  the  blood  of  all 
men  '  ?  Can  we  ?  Yonder  in  the  city  of  Bethel  is  a 
double  grave  where  lie  the  bones  of  a  man  of  God 
who  turned  aside  from  duty  and  was  slain,  and  beside 
them  the  bones  of  an  old  prophet  who  should  have 
been  his  friend  but  was  his  tempter,  and  led  him  down 
to  death.  The  young  man  was  taken  away  in  his 
iniquity,  but  his  blood  will  be  required  at  the  watch- 
man's hands.  Are  we  making  for  ourselves  an  unquiet 
grave  like  that  in  which  to  lie  down  at  the  last  ? 

'  It  was  said  to  them  of  old  time,  thou  shalt  not 
kill' — this  time  it  is  Christ  who  is  the  speaker, — 
*  but  I  say  unto  you,  that  every  one  who  is  angry  with 
his  brother  shall  be  in  danger  of  the  judgment' 
And  John  puts  it  even  more  strongly :  '  Whosoever 
hateth  his  brother  is  a  murderer.'  Ah !  brethren, 
this  old  commandment  has  more  teeth  than  we 
thought.  Pride,  envy,  malice,  hate — these  are  murder 
microbes  ;  give  them  their  opportunity  and  they  will 
bring  forth  death.  '  Whosoever  hateth  his  brother  is 
a  murderer' — does  not  that  word  judge  some  of  us? 
You  never  lifted  a  hand  against  a  fellow-man  ?  No ; 
but  you  struck  at  his  fair  name,  his  honour,  his  re- 
putation ;  you  thrust  at  him  with  the  shafts  of  envy, 
you  stabbed  him  with  the  poisoned  daggers  of  hate ; 
and  if  the  tell-tale  crimson   stain  had  followed  the 

I 


130  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

stroke,  you  would  be  sitting  red-handed  in  church 
to-night.  Is  there  one  of  us  who  can  wipe  his  mouth 
and  say,  '  I  have  never  done  this  wickedness '  ?  Have 
we  not  all  need  to  cry  aloud,  *  Deliver  me  from  blood- 
guiltiness,  O  God,  thou  God  of  my  salvation,'  and  to 
pray  with  all  the  passion  of  our  being,  *  Incline  our 
hearts,  O  Lord,  that  in  all  its  breadth  and  length  and 
depth  and  height,  we  may  keep  this  law  of  Thine '  ? 


THE   SEVENTH   COMMANDMENT 


■Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery.' — Exodus  xx.  14. 


THE  SEVENTH  COMMANDMENT 

It  was  pointed  out  in  the  previous  address  that  the 
Sixth,  Seventh,  Eighth  and  Ninth  Commandments 
were  meant  to  safeguard,  as  far  as  law  can,  man's 
life,  his  home,  his  possessions,  his  character,  re- 
spectively. The  Seventh  Commandment  flings  up 
its  rampart  round  the  home,  by  declaring  the  sanctity 
and  inviolability  of  the  marriage  tie. 


I 

It  is  very  interesting  and  instructive  to  mark  the 
various  steps  by  which  the  high  Christian  ideal  of 
marriage  has  been  attained.  Only  by  slow  and 
painful  stages  has  man  entered  into  full  possession 
of  the  truth.  When  we  turn  to  the  Old  Testament 
we  find  that  the  patriarchs  had  their  concubines. 
Moses,  *  because  of  the  hardness  of  their  hearts,' 
suffered  a  man  to  give  to  his  wife  a  bill  of  divorce- 
ment, and  to  put  her  away,  sometimes  even  on  the 
most  trivial  pretext.  Yet  even  in  the  Old  Testament 
we  can  trace  the  movement  towards  a  purer  ideal. 
One  of  the  favourite  figures  under  which  the  prophets 


134  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

delight  to  set  forth  the  relation  of  Jehovah  to  His 
people  is  that  of  husband  and  wife  ;  and  the  beautiful 
Song  of  Songs — one  of  the  most  misunderstood  books 
of  the  Bible — is  in  reality  a  lovely  poem  in  honour 
of  a  simple  maiden's  love  which,  through  all  the 
allurements  of  Solomon  and  his  court,  remains  stead- 
fast to  its  first  and  early  choice. 

But  it  was  not  until  Christ  came  that  the  Christian 
law  of  marriage  was  fully  revealed  ;  and  to  the  key  of 
His  great  words  all  the  New  Testament  teaching  on  the 
subject  is  pitched.  Husbands  are  to  love  their  wives 
*  even  as  Christ  also  loved  the  Church,  and  gave  Him- 
self up  for  it'  The  Church,  according  to  Paul's  tender 
and  beautiful  image,  is  the  Bride  of  Christ ;  and  the 
holy  estate  of  Matrimony — as  the  marriage  service 
of  the  Anglican  Church,  paraphrasing  the  Apostle's 
words,  puts  it — signifies  unto  us  the  mystical  union 
that  is  between  Christ  and  His  Church.  Higher  than 
this  it  is  impossible  to  go.  From  the  coarse  animalism 
of  a  bygone  day  we  have  reached  at  last  the  ideal  of 
a  '  high,  mysterious  union,  which  nought  on  earth 
may  break,'  '  the  pure  espousal  of  Christian  man  and 
maid '  of  which  John  Keble  sings. 

Not  only  has  there  been  a  development  in  the 
marriage  ideal  itself,  but  there  has  been,  since  Christ's 
day,  a  steadily  growing  apprehension,  by  Christian 
men  and  women,  of  the  full  significance  of  His  teach- 
ing. Let  me  give  an  illustration  of  what  I  mean. 
Modern  readers  of  Shakespeare  are  sometimes  shocked 


THE   SEVENTH   COMMANDMENT  1 35 

at  the  almost  brutal  frankness  with  which  the  great 
dramatist  speaks  of  the  relations  between  the  sexes. 
Not  that  Shakespeare  was  really  less  reverent  than 
we,  who,  indeed,  sometimes  push  our  reserve  to  false 
and  fatal  extremes.  Nevertheless,  there  is  a  delicate 
reticence  on  this  subject  instinctive — may  I  not  say  ? 
— to  all  pure-minded  men  to-day  which  the  world  of 
Shakespeare  never  knew. 

Yet,  notwithstanding  this  twofold  development, 
no  thoughtful  mind  can  escape  the  conclusion  that  in 
regard  to  this  whole  question  we  are  living  in  days 
big  with  perilous  possibilities  for  the  future.  It  is 
amazing  to  behold  the  light-heartedness  with  which 
some  to-day  are  seeking  to  re-open  questions  which 
ought  to  be  regarded  as  closed  for  ever,  and,  blind  to 
all  the  lessons  of  history,  do  not  hesitate  to  tamper 
with  institutions  with  whose  strength  and  purity  is 
bound  up  all  that  is  fairest  and  holiest  in  life.  Here 
is  one  example  of  the  kind  of  thing  that  is  being 
written  and  said  by  some  in  our  midst  just  now — I 
quote  the  words  of  two  writers  from  a  book  for  which 
they  are  conjointly  responsible  :  the  ideal  of  marriage 
which  they  desire  to  see  substituted  for  the  existing 
one  is,  they  tell  us,  'an  association  terminable  at 
the  will  of  either  party ' ;  and  they  further  go  on  to 
say  that  when  that  has  come  to  pass  for  which  they 
hope,  there  will  be  *  no  vestige  of  reprobation  weigh- 
ing on  the  dissolution  of  one  tie  and  the  forming  of 
another,'  or,  I  presume,  of  any  number.     And  when 


136  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

to  this  direct  advocacy  of  the  claims  of  whatsoever  Js 
vile  and  bestial  in  man  we  add  the  sickening  revela- 
tions of  our  courts  of  justice,  the  increased  facilities 
for  obtaining  divorce,  the  worse  than  pagan  immorality 
of  some  of  our  literature,  the  hideous  social  vice 
which  is  the  foulest  blot  on  the  life  of  our  great  cities, 
and  the  grinding  poverty  which,  at  one  end  of  the 
social  scale,  makes  common  decency  as  difficult 
as,  at  the  other  end,  idle  luxury  makes  the  grossest 
sensualism  easy,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  hearts  of 
some  of  us  who  are  not  pessimists  sometimes  fail  us, 
and  we  begin  to  ask  what  the  end  of  these  things 
will  be.  Robertson  of  Brighton  once  declared  that 
there  are  two  rocks  upon  which  every  man  must 
either  anchor  or  split — God  and  woman.  This  is  not 
less  true  of  the  community  than  of  the  individual. 
I  do  not  wish  to  indulge  in  mournful  prophecies,  but 
if  doctrines  like  those  of  which  the  above  is  an  ex- 
ample should  ever  become  the  commonly  accepted 
beliefs  of  the  people  of  this  land — which  God  in  His 
mercy  forbid ! — this  great  nation  will  assuredly  end 
at  last  among  the  breakers.  It  is  no  sour  and  narrow 
Puritan,  but  one  of  the  ripest  scholars  and  thinkers  of 
our  time,  who  has  told  us  that  '  when  home  life,  with 
its  sanctities,  its  simplicity,  its  calm  and  deep  joys  and 
sorrows,  ceases  to  have  its  charm  for  us  in  England, 
the  greatest  break-up  and  catastrophe  in  English 
history  will  not  be  far  off.' 


THE  SEVENTH   COMMANDMENT  1 37 

II 

This  is  why  it  is  impossible  for  a  Christian  minister 
to  be  silent  on  the  subject  raised  by  the  Seventh 
Commandment :  the  issues  involved  are  so  tremendous 
and  far-reaching.  Yet  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
plain  and  honest  speaking  are  well-nigh  insuperable. 
A  man  may  resolve  to  shun  idle  and  toothless  gener- 
alities and  tell  the  whole  truth  in  simple  and  un- 
equivocal language,  and  he  may  do  so  with  all 
Sincerity  of  purpose  and  singleness  of  aim  ;  and  yet, 
when  he  has  finished,  he  may  be  haunted  with  the 
fear  that,  so  far  at  least  as  many  of  those  who  have 
listened  to  him  are  concerned,  it  were  better  if  he  had 
never  spoken  at  all,  for  they  will  but  wrest  his  best- 
intentioned  words  to  their  own  destruction.  How  is 
it  possible  for  me — how  is  it  possible  for  any  one — to 
say,  in  the  presence  of  a  mixed  and  miscellaneous 
throng,  one-half  of  what  somebody  ought  to  say  to 
us  all  ? 

'  What  somebody  ought  to  say  to  us  all ' :  but  that 
*  somebody '  is  not  the  preacher,  but  you  fathers  and 
mothers.  That  which  is  not  possible  in  the  pulpit 
ought  to  be  felt  to  be  imperative  in  the  home.  If 
parents  did  their  duty  there  would  be  little  need  for 
others  to  speak  at  all.  God  forbid  that  I  should 
speak  harshly  in  a  matter  where  the  right  way  must 
always  be  a  difficult  way  ;  but  there  is  something 
almost  criminal  in  the  blank  ignorance  concerning 


138  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

themselves  in   which  fathers  and   mothers  so  often 
allow  their  sons  and   daughters  to  go  out  into  the 
world.     I  know  what  keeps  so   many  of  us  silent ; 
it  is  that  same  feeling  of  reticence  to  which  I  have 
already  referred;   and  under  other  circumstances  it 
can  easily  justify  itself;  but  here  reticence  may  mean 
ruin.    But,  you  say,  will  they  not  find  out  these  things 
soon  enough  for  themselves  ?     They  will — you  can- 
not keep  your  children  tied  to  the  table  leg  all  their 
days — but  with  this  difference  :  that  instead  of  having 
you  as  their  teacher,  they  will  learn  the  lesson  per- 
chance at  the  devil's  desk,  and  some  day,  when  your 
heart  aches  for  consequences  that  a  wise  and  timely 
word  might  have  averted,  they  will  turn  upon  you 
and  ask,  '  Why  did  not  j/ou  tell  us  of  these  things  ? 
You  who  knew,  why  did  you  send  us  out,  ignorant  as 
babes,  into  the  midst  of  a  cruel  and  seducing  world  ? ' 
And  therefore  I  shall  make  no  attempt,  by  anything 
that  I  say  now,  to  carry  any  other  man's  responsibility. 
Every  parent  must  bear  his  own  burden.    The  proper 
sermon  on  the  Seventh  Commandment  can  never  be 
proclaimed  on  the  house-tops  by  the  preacher ;   it 
must  be  whispered  in  secret  by  lips  of  love.     I  have 
very  little   to   say,   therefore,   of  the   particular   sin 
named  in  this  commandment,  or  of  its  kindred  sins  ; 
and  at  the  risk  of  myself  lapsing  into  *  generalities,' 
I  must  be  content  to  translate  this  law  of  God  into 
the  language  of  St.  Peter :  '  I  beseech  you,  abstain 
from  fleshly  lusts  which  war  against  the  soul ' ;  or  of 


THE   SEVENTH   COMMANDMENT  1 39 

St.  Paul's  exhortation  to  Timothy,  *  Keep  thyself 
pure/  and  in  that  form  seek  to  urge  it  on  the  heart 
and  conscience  of  us  all. 


Ill 

And  to  begin  with,  let  a  man  not  think  it  a  strange 
thing  that  this  temptation,  in  one  form  or  another, 
come  upon  him  to  try  him.  Let  him  lay  his  account 
for  it,  and  be  prepared  for  it,  and  gird  up  the  loins  of 
his  soul  to  meet  it,  that  it  take  him  not  by  surprise, 
and  so  gain  an  advantage  over  him.  Then  let  him 
summon  into  the  field  every  available  motive  to  be 
his  ally  in  this  Holy  War  of  soul  with  sense.  Begin, 
if  you  will,  with  the  lowest.  Think  of  the  physical 
consequences  by  which  sins  of  the  flesh  are  wont  to 
avenge  themselves.  Think,  too,  of  that  defilement  of 
the  whole  inner  man  which  follows  so  surely  in  their 
train.  'When  lust,'  says  John  Milton,  in  a  poem 
that  a  young  man  can  never  read  too  often — 

*  By  unchaste  looks,  loose  gestures  and  foul  talk, 
But  most  by  lewd  and  lavish  act  of  sin, 
Lets  in  defilement  to  the  inward  parts. 
The  soul  grows  clotted  by  contagion.' 

Above  all,  if  some  day,  another  life  linked  with  yours, 
you  hope  to  stand  at  those  crystal  gates  that  open  on 
the  pure  and  holy  joys  of  wedded  life,  then  for  love's 
sweet  sake  keep  thyself  pure.  There  is  a  very  power- 
ful passage  in  a  work  of  modern  fiction  (I  make  the 


140  THE  TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

quotation  at  second-hand  only)  in  which  a  man  who 
had  dwelt  in  Sodom  in  his  younger  days  tries  in  vain 
to  win  the  woman  who  could  and  would  have  loved 
him  had  he  been  the  pure  man  she  believed  he  was — 
* "  You  would  have  loved  me,  then,  if  I  had  lived  a 
different  life  ?  "  he  said. 

' "  Yes,"  she  answered  simply,  "  I  should  have  loved 
you.     You  were  born  for  me.     Why,  oh  why,  did  yoiv— 
not  live  for  me  ?  " 

* "  I  wish  to  God  I  had,"  he  answered. 
* "  You  meant  to  marry  always,"  she  said.     "  You 
treasured  in  your  heart  your  ideal  of  a  woman.     Why 
could  you  not  have  lived  so  that  you  would  have  been 
her  ideal  too,  when  at  last  you  met  ?  " 

' "  I  wish  to  God  I  had,"  he  repeated  .  .  .  And  that,' 
says  the  writer  from  whose  pages  I  make  the  quota- 
tion, *  was  his  retribution,  the  fiery  hail  that  swept 
over  his  life  and  left  it  scorched  and  sterile  :  they  lose 
the  power  of  loving,  and  become  unfit  for  any  pure 
and  noble  love.' 

And  besides  all  this,  it  may  be  that  some  of  us  will 
need  to  practise  a  rigorous  self-discipline  and  self- 
suppression.  *  If  thy  right  eye  causeth  thee  to 
stumble,  pluck  it  out,  and  cast  it  from  thee.  And  if 
thy  right  hand  causeth  thee  to  stumble,  cut  it  off,  and 
cast  it  from  thee  :  for  it  is  profitable  for  thee  that  one 
of  thy  members  should  perish,  and  not  thy  whole 
body  go  into  hell.'  And  just  as  a  commander  will 
sometimes  abandon  and  destroy  his  outv/orks  that  he 


THE   SEVENTH   COMMANDMENT  141 

may  concentrate  all  his  forces  on  the  citadel ;  so 
sometimes  a  man  must  limit  himself  that  he  may  be 
safe.  Precisely  how  this  principle  is  to  be  applied 
each  one  must  determine  for  himself  For  some  of 
us  it  may  mean  that  there  are  columns  of  the  daily 
paper  that  we  had  better  never  read,  and  pictures  on 
which  we  had  better  never  look,  and  books  between 
whose  covers  we  had  better  never  glance,  and  com- 
panionships we  may  not  safely  cherish  another 
twenty-four  hours,  and  places  of  amusement  which, 
harmless  as  they  may  be  to  some,  are  to  us  the  very 
vestibule  of  hell.  Do  not  mistake  me.  This  is  not  the 
parrot-cry  of  a  sour  and  crabbed  Puritanism  that 
would  rob  life  of  all  its  colour  and  leave  it  only  a  dull 
and  dreary  drab  ;  it  is  the  simple  dictate  of  prudence 
and  of  common-sense.  First  of  all  make  life  safe ; 
decorate  it  afterwards  if  you  will.  But  if  we  are  more 
anxious  about  what  we  call  the  '  many-sidedness '  of 
life  than  about  its  security,  some  day  the  crash  will 
come  and  decorations  and  all  will  topple  into  the 
dust  together. 

But  we  have  not  reached  the  root  of  the  matter 
even  yet.  It  is  '  out  of  the  heart,'  Christ  said,  proceed 
evil  thoughts,  fornications,  adulteries,  all  the  things 
that  defile  a  man  ;  and  therefore  it  is  at  the  heart's 
door  that  the  sentinel  must  be  set  and  the  ceaseless 
vigil    kept;    keep    tkj/se/f.     'My  strength   is   as   the 

strength  of  ten  '—so  sang  the  brave  Sir  Galahad 

*  because  my  heart  is  pure.'     But  when  through  the 


142  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

heart's  open  door  troops  of  evil  thoughts  enter 
unchallenged,  then,  in  the  day  when  the  battle  rages 
fierce  and  loud  around  the  city  of  Mansoul,  she  will 
find  a  traitorous  host  entrenched  within  her  midst, 
ready  and  eager  to  betray  her  into  the  hands  of  her  foe. 


IV 

How  then  shall  a  young  man  keep  his  heart  ?  Let 
him  learn  to  avoid  the  empty  heart.  You  remember 
Christ's  parable  of  the  chamber  swept,  garnished,  and 
empty,  into  which  enter  the  seven  devils  in  all  their 
diabolical  completeness.  '  Whatsoever  things  are 
true,'  says  St.  Paul, '  whatsoever  things  are  honourable, 
whatsoever  things  are  just,  whatsoever  things  are  pure, 
whatsoever  things  are  lovely,  whatsoever  things  are 
of  good  report — think  on  these  things ' ;  that  is,  fill 
up  your  life  with  high  and  holy  interests,  bind  your- 
self by  a  hundred  ties  to  the  good,  the  beautiful,  and 
the  true.  There  is  always  peril  to  a  ship  in  a  storm 
when  it  is  held  by  a  single  cable.  Have  all  your 
anchors  out,  and  you  may  outride  the  wildest  night 
of  temptation.  Or,  to  change  the  figure,  let  a  man 
make  to  himself  friends  of  the  things  that  are  just 
and  pure  and  lovely  and  of  good  report,  and  in  the 
day  of  battle  he  will  find  that  they  have  become  his 
allies  to  stand  by  his  side  and  to  fight  for  his  salvation. 
The  young  men  and  women  for  whom  I  fear  in  a  big 
city  are  they  who  do  not  know  what  to  do  with  their 


THE   SEVENTH   COMMANDMENT  1 43 

leisure  hours.  If  a  young  woman  cares  for  nothing 
better  than  lounging  idly  about  the  streets,  if  a  young 
man  finds  his  chief  delight  in  watching  the  antics  of 
a  ballet-girl  on  the  boards  of  a  third-rate  theatre,  the 
devil  is  likely  to  find  them  both  an  easy  prey.  But 
they  who  have  acquired  a  passion  for  books,  for 
music,  for  painting,  who  can  lose  themselves  in  the 
pursuit  of  some  worthy  and  ennobling  interest,  will 
find  that  base  and  vulgar  temptations,  before  which 
others  fall,  do  not  so  much  as  come  near  them. 

But  mightier  than  all  these  may  be  the  pure  love 
of  a  good  man  or  woman.  Do  not  laugh  at  the 
devotion  of  young  lovers.  Such  love  may  be  God's 
guardian  angel,  strong  as  it  is  fair,  sent,  like  the  white- 
winged  messengers  that  of  old  took  Lot  by  the  hand, 
to  lead  them  away  from  the  city  of  Destruction. 

'  Indeed  I  know 
Of  no  more  subtle  master  under  heaven 
Than  is  the  maiden  passion  for  a  maid, 
Not  only  to  keep  down  the  base  in  man, 
But  teach  high  thought,  and  amiable  words 
And  courtliness,  and  the  desire  of  fame, 
And  love  of  truth,  and  all  that  makes  a  man.' 

Yet  with  all  our  keeping,  the  heart  is  never  surely 
kept  till  it  is  kept  by  Christ.  'Whatsoever  things 
are  pure,  and  just,  and  lovely,  and  of  good  report — 
think  on  these  things ' :  but  Paul  was  the  last  man  in 
the  world  to  stop  short  at  any  '  things,'  good  and  true 
as  they  may  be.  We  are  never  safe  till  we  are  saved, 
saved  by  Christ.     Do  not  call  that  a  preacher's  empty 


144  ^^^   ^^^   COMMANDMENTS 

catchword;   it  is  a  truth  writ  large  in    the  life   of 
every  day. 

Some  of  you  will  remember  Charles  Kingsley's 
description  of  Sir  Richard  Grenville :  '  Lovely  to  all 
good  men,  awful  to  all  bad  men ;  in  whose  presence 
none  dare  say  or  do  a  mean  or  ribald  thing ;  whom 
brave  men  left  feeling  themselves  nerved  to  do  their 
duty  better,  while  cowards  slipped  away,  as  bats  and 
owls  before  the  sun.'  We  have  all  known  men  like 
that,  men  whose  very  presence  was  a  call  to  purity, 
whom  only  to  be  with  made  it  easier  to  do  right, 
harder  to  do  wrong.  But  to  have  Christ  with  us,  not 
at  rare  and  far-off  moments  of  our  life,  but  with  us 
'  all  the  days '  by  our  side  and  in  our  heart — what 
might  that  not  do  for  us }  And  that  it  is  which  in 
the  Gospel  is  offered  to  all. 

Do  I  speak  to  any  who  have  been  tempted  and 
have  fallen,  whose  hour  of  trial  has  been  their  hour  of 
weakness,  who  had  not  learned  to  say  with  Joseph, 
'  How  can  I  do  this  great  wickedness,  and  sin  against 
God  ? '  Do  not  confess  to  me  ;  it  is  not  for  me  to 
pry  into  the  secrets  of  any  man's  heart ;  make  your 
confession  unto  God.  And  though  because  of  your 
sin  you  may  have  to  go  softly  all  your  days,  and 
though  there  be  consequences  that  even  confession 
cannot  undo,  yet  with  Him  there  is  mercy,  with  Him 
there  is  cleansing. 

There  is  a  wonderful  little  story  in  the  Old  Testa- 


THE  SEVENTH   COMMANDMENT  145 

ment  which  tells  how,  when  David  had  fallen  into 
grievous  sin,  the  Lord  sent  Nathan  unto  him. 
'Wherefore,'  cried  the  prophet,  'hast  thou  despised 
the  word  of  the  Lord,  to  do  that  which  is  evil  in  His 
sight  ?  Now  therefore,  the  sword  shall  never  depart 
from  thine  house.  And  David  said  unto  Nathan, 
I  have  sinned  against  the  Lord.'  One  short,  sharp 
cry  of  penitence — only  two  words  in  the  Hebrew — 
and  then,  swift  as  the  thunderclap  answers  the 
lightning-flash,  '  Nathan  said  unto  David,  The  Lord 
also  hath  put  away  thy  sin  :  thou  shalt  not  die.'  '  And 
if  we  confess  our  sins.  He  is  faithful  and  just  to 
forgive  us  our  sins,  and  to  cleanse  us  from  all 
unrighteousness.' 


THE    EIGHTH    COMMANDMENT 


Thou  shalt  not  steal.'— Exodus  xx.  15. 


THE  EIGHTH  COMMANDMENT 

It  is  a  very  superficial  view  of  the  Ten  Command- 
ments that  regards  them  only  as  a  string  of  negative 
precepts.  They  are  rather  the  embodiment  and 
expression  of  certain  great  Divine  ideas.  Thus,  the 
First  and  Second  set  forth  respectively  the  unity  and 
spirituality  of  the  Divine  Being ;  from  the  Fifth  we 
learn  that  the  family  is  a  Divine  institution  ;  the 
Sixth  stands  for  the  sacredness  of  human  life ;  and, 
similarly,  the  Eighth  is  the  embodiment  of  the  idea 
which  underlies  our  phrase,  'the  sacredness  of 
property.' 

I  hesitate  somewhat  to  use  the  phrase  '  sacredness 
of  property,'  because  of  the  greed  and  tyranny  which 
have  so  often  sheltered  themselves  behind  it.  And 
in  these  days,  when  '  property '  is  so  well  able  to  take 
care  of  itself,  it  is  usually  more  necessary  to  draw 
attention  to  its  duties  than  to  plead  for  its  rights. 
Nevertheless,  however  the  phrase  may  have  been 
abused,  it  represents  a  great  truth.  The  old  distinc- 
tion between  meum  and  tuuvi  is  recognized  and 
sanctioned  by  Scripture.     The  Bible  lends  no  support 

149 


I50  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

to  the  famous  saying  of  Proudhon  that  'property- 
is  theft'  If  a  man  had  not  secured  to  him  the  results 
of  the  work  of  his  own  hands  or  brain,  if  no  one  could 
say  that  the  things  which  he  possessed  were  his  own, 
commerce  would  be  paralyzed,  civilized  societies 
would  cease  to  exist.  It  may  often  be  impossible  to 
defend  the  methods  by  which  many  have  come  into 
their  possessions — and  no  book  in  the  world  speaks  a 
plainer  language  on  that  matter  than  does  the  Bible — 
yet  this  does  not  affect  the  general  principle  of  the 
right  of  individual  ownership.  And  it  is  this  principle, 
that  a  man  may  enjoy  possessions  which  belong  to 
himself  alone,  and  which  no  other  may  take  from 
him,  which  lies  behind  the  prohibition  of  the  Eighth 
Commandment. 

All  that  appears  simple  and  obvious  enough,  and, 
so  long  as  one  is  content  to  deal  in  general  principles 
of  that  kind,  few  will  disagree.  But  it  is  the  minor 
premise  in  the  syllogism  of  morals  that  is  usually  the 
most  important.  Say  '  Dishonesty  is  wrong,'  and 
nobody  dissents ;  but  go  on  to  lay  your  finger  on 
individual  practices  that  are  dishonest,  and  im- 
mediately you  are  greeted  with  a  chorus  of  angry, 
protesting  voices.  Yet,  difficult  as  the  attempt  may  be, 
it  is  of  little  use  preaching  on  the  Eighth  Command- 
ment unless  one  is  prepared  to  make  it.  Without, 
therefore,  being  unmindful  of  general  principles,  my 
chief  business  just  now  is,  if  I  may  so  put  it,  to  lay 
this  commandment  alongside  our  modern  life,  and  to 


THE   EIGHTH   COMMANDMENT  151 

mark   what  applications  of  it  are  called  for  by  the 
circumstances  of  to-day. 

It  is  very  disappointing  to  learn,  on  the  authority 
of  Canon  Barnett,  that  in  the  East  End  of  London— 
a  district  which  he  knows  as  few  men  living  know 
it — there  has  been  during  the  last  twenty  years  *  a 
decrease  of  old-fashioned  honesty.'  'Stealing  and 
lying/  he  says,  '  no  longer  rank  among  the  chief  vices. 
.  .  .  There  is  much  talk  about  what  is  right  in  little 
matters,  but  the  "robust  conscience"  which  damns 
as  wrong  any  departure  from  simple  honesty  and 
truth  is  often  wanting.'  This  is  very  saddening,  yet  I 
should  only  be  wasting  my  breath  in  condemning 
here  the  vulgar  thefts  of  the  pickpocket  or  the  burglar. 
It  is  no  use  preaching  to  a  congregation  that  is  not 
present,  and  the  first  and  simplest  application  of  the 
Eighth  Commandment  is  rather  the  business  of  a 
prison  chaplain  than  of  a  minister  to  an  ordinary 
Christian  congregation.  But  men  may  break  this 
law  of  God  though  they  never  rob  a  till,  nor  forge  a 
cheque,  nor  break  into  their  neighbour's  house  ;  and 
it  is  this  wider  interpretation  of  the  commandment 
that  is  our  present  concern. 


Closely  related  to  our  subject  is  a  problem  which 
is  already  profoundly  exercising  the  minds  of  many, 
and  to  which  as  the   national    conscience   becomes 


152  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

more  enlightened,  we  shall  be  compelled  to  address 
ourselves.  The  problem  is  this :  how  to  secure  a 
juster  distribution  of  the  fruits  of  industry  among 
those  by  whose  toil,  whether  of  hands  or  of  brain, 
they  have  been  produced.  As  we  believe  that  the 
Eighth  Commandment  is  a  law  of  God,  we  cannot 
much  longer  put  that  problem  by.  Of  course,  we  are 
not  without  many  proffered  solutions ;  and  some  of 
them  are  nothing  if  they  are  not  drastic.  In  which 
of  these  the  real  solution  lies — if,  indeed,  it  lies  in 
any  of  them — it  is  not  for  me  to  say.  The  time  for 
a  final  judgment  is  not  yet  come.  But  meanwhile  we 
are  slowly  feeling  our  way  to  one  or  two  great  truths. 
In  the  first  place,  we  know  now  that  there  is  a 
problem  to  be  solved.  We  are  not  blind  to  what  has 
been  done.  Our  boasted  progress  during  the  last 
sixty  years,  of  which  we  have  lately  heard  so  much, 
is  not  a  myth,  thank  God,  but  a  splendid  reality. 
Neither  are  we  the  victims  of  foolish  delusions, 
seeking  after  an  unreal  and  impossible  'equality.' 
And  yet  it  is  idle  to  pretend  that  we  are  satisfied. 
While  wealth  accumulates  in  the  hands  of  the  few  at 
the  same  time  that  multitudes,  of  whose  labour  that 
wealth  is  in  large  part  the  creation,  are  left  to  struggle 
in  a  slough  of  poverty  from  which  there  is  no  escape 
save  the  workhouse  or  the  grave — I  say,  so  long  as 
these  things  are  so,  because  we  believe  in  God  we 
dare  not  be  satisfied.  It  must  be  possible  to  find  a 
larger  and  a  truer  justice. 


THE   EIGHTH   COMMANDMENT  1 53 

It  is  our  search  for  this  wider  justice  that  is 
revealing  to  us  the  great  truths  of  which  I  speak, 
and  of  which,  significantly  enough,  the  most  fitting 
expression  is  often  to  be  found  in  the  language  of  the 
New  Testament.  *  The  husbandman  that  laboureth,' 
says  St.  Paul,  '  must  be  the  first — the  first — to  par- 
take of  the  fruits.'  The  political  economist  may 
shake  his  head  ;  but  the  conscience  of  this  nation  is 
yielding  its  assent  more  and  more  to  this  doctrine  of 
the  Apostle,  and  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  it 
will  be  accepted  as  a  first  principle  in  the  adjustment 
of  the  rival  claims  of  capital  and  labour.  Indeed, 
the  political  economists  themselves  are  beginning 
to  recognize  its  justice.  This  is  how  one  of  them — 
Professor  Graham,  of  Belfast — addresses  the  great 
capitalists  of  our  day  :  *  Your  great  capital,'  he  says, 
*  by  giving  you  a  kind  of  monopoly,  enables  you  to 
crush  or  keep  out  rivals,  to  raise  or  keep  up  prices, 
and  to  a  considerable  extent  to  dictate  terms  to  your 
hands.  But  would  it  not  be  more  prudent  to  conciliate 
the  latter,  and  to  draw  them  to  your  side  by  good 
wages  ?  If  you  do  not,  it  may  be  the  worse  for  you. 
For  there  is  a  kind  of  feeling  arising  that  your  lot 
in  modern  days  is  really  too  fortunate ;  and  then 
there  is  a  doubt  as  to  the  sources  of  your  capital,  a 
suspicion  that,  however  juridically  unimpeachable  its 
title,  it  is  not  all  morally  yours  ;  and  when  such  a 
feeling  arises,  if  not  overcome  by  your  good  deeds 
in  other  directions,  there  are  ways  in  which  it  can 


154  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

make  itself  felt  to  your  disadvantage.  Correct,  then, 
the  possible  defects  in  your  title  by  justice  to  your 
workers,  and  afterwards  by  generous  benefactions  ; 
lest  the  time  should  come  when  your  profits  may 
be  taken  from  you,  and  you  may  have  to  content 
yourself  with  the  manager's  salary,  or  less  than  the 
present  scale  of  remuneration.'  You  may  call  that 
'  Socialism  '  if  you  like — really,  of  course,  it  is  nothing 
of  the  kind — but  whatever  name  you  give  to  it,  it  will 
be  well  for  all  of  us  if  they  to  whom  these  words  are 
addressed  give  heed  to  them. 

Another  great  truth,  the  full  significance  of  which 
is  perhaps  only  yet  beginning  to  come  home  to  us, 
may  also  be  stated  in  the  words  of  St.  Paul :  '  None 
of  us  liveth  to  himself.'  All  are  dependent  upon  the 
service  of  others  ;  therefore  do  all  owe  service  of  one 
kind  or  another.  That  does  not  mean  that  the 
artist  is  to  lay  aside  his  brush,  and  the  poet  his  pen, 
and  turn  hodman  or  scavenger.  No ;  our  gifts 
indicate  our  service  and  bind  us  to  it ;  what  a  man 
can  best  do  he  should  be  left  free  to  do,  for  in  so 
doing  he  best  serves  the  community.  But  inasmuch 
as  all  live  by  the  community,  all  are  bound,  in  their 
ov/n  measure  and  capacity,  to  live  for  it ;  he  who  is 
continually  receiving  from  it,  and  yet  yields  to  it 
nothing  in  return,  is  an  enemy  of  society  of  the  very 
worst  kind ;  and  therein  is  that  startling  saying 
justified,  that  every  man  lives  by  one  of  two  methods, 
labour  or  theft.     We  hear  a  good  deal  sometimes 


THE   EIGHTH   COxMMANDMENT  1 55 

about  the  'dangerous  classes';  but  I  say  fearlessly 
the  most  dangerous  classes  in  English  society  to-day 
are  not  the  glib-tongued  fellows  who  preach  a  re- 
volutionary Socialism  at  our  street  corners  and  in 
our  public  parks ;  they  are  the  idle  rich,  the  '  un- 
employed '  at  the  other  end  of  the  social  scale. 

What  may  be  the  issues  of  a  fuller  realization  of 
this  fact  of  the  interdependence  of  each  upon  all  I 
will  not  attempt  to  forecast ;  but  I  believe  with 
Thomas  Carlyle  that  'a  day  is  ever  struggling 
forward,  a  day  will  arrive  in  some  approximate 
degree,  when  he  who  has  no  work  to  do,  by  what- 
ever name  he  may  be  known,  will  not  find  it  good 
to  show  himself  in  our  quarter  of  the  solar  system.' 
*  If  any  will  not  work,'  said  St.  Paul,  '  neither  let  him 
eat ' ;  we  are  likely  to  witness  a  pretty  stringent 
application  of  that  principle  at  the  hands  of  the 
twentieth  century  ;  but  at  which  end  it  will  begin, 
whether  with  the  idle  loafer  in  the  streets,  or  with 
his  aristocratic  companion  in  the  West  End,  remains 
to  be  seen. 

II 

Again,  this  Eighth  Commandment  stands  in  a  very 
intimate  relation  to  that  wide  and  widening  circle 
of  difficult  ethical  problems,  sometimes  conveniently 
summed  up  under  the  head  of '  commercial  morality.' 
Now  I  am  not,  and  I  never  was,  what  is  called  a 
'  business  man/  and  I  am  not  going  to  speak  of  what 


156  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

I  do  not  know.  I  bring  no  sweeping  charges  against 
the  world  of  commerce,  nor  shall  I  discuss  the 
charges  that  are  often  brought  by  others  ;  how  far 
they  are  true  you  know  better  than  I.  But  I  want  to 
suggest  two  or  three  questions  for  Christian  men  of 
business  to  ponder.  These  '  tricks  of  trade ' — no,  I  am 
going  to  mention  no  examples  ;  I  might  name  half 
a  dozen,  and  yet  leave  out  the  one  you  know  most 
of — what  does  Christ  think  of  them,  how  will  they 
square  with  His  law?  That  long  advertisement  you 
sent  to  the  paper  or  the  printer  yesterday — if  He  had 
stood  by  your  side  as  you  drew  it  up,  how  much 
would  He  have  struck  out?  All  the  chartered 
accountants  in  the  city  may  be  ready  to  sign  your 
books ;  but  when  Christ  comes  to  audit  them — 
what?  Oh,  the  sham  and  shoddy  that  is  in  the 
world  of  commerce  to-day !  One  does  not  need 
to  be  a  *  business  man '  to  find  that  out ;  it  is  enough 
if  he  be  a  customer.  You  remember  the  grim 
irony  of  Carlyle's  prayer  to  Beelzebub  which  he 
puts  into  the  lips  of  men  to-day :  *  Help  us,  thou 
great  lord  of  shoddy,  adulteration,  and  misfeasance, 
to  do  our  work  with  a  maximum  of  slimness,  swift- 
ness, profit,  and  mendacity,  for  the  devil's  sake. 
Amen.'  And  with  all  these  things,  doubtless,  the 
devil  is  well  pleased  ;  but  Christ — Christ — what  does 
He  think  about  them  ? 

But  perhaps   I   shall   be  told  that,  as  things  are 
nowadays,  it  is  impossible  to  have  unvarying  regard 


THE   EIGHTH   COMMANDMENT  1 57 

to  high  Christian  principles,  and  that,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  if  an  apprentice  or  a  salesman  persisted  in 
introducing  considerations  of  that  kind  he  would 
speedily  be  sent  about  his  business,  while,  so  far 
as  the  tradesman  himself  is  concerned,  the  only 
result  would  be  to  turn  the  tide  of  custom  from  his 
own  door  to  that  of  some  less  scrupulous  rival. 
Has  it  come  to  this,  then,  that  it  is  impossible 
for  a  business  man  to  be  both  honest  and  success- 
ful ? — for  that  is  what  a  statement  of  this  kind  means, 
if  it  means  anything  at  all.  I  decline  to  believe  it. 
There  have  been,  and  there  are  still,  thank  God, 
thousands — and  among  them  many  of  the  kings  and 
princes  of  the  world  of  commerce — who  have  refused 
to  bow  the  knee  to  the  Baal  of  trickery  and  fraud. 
Take  the  case  of  Alexander  Balfour,  of  Liverpool. 
Balfour  went  as  a  young  man  from  the  East  of 
Scotland  to  the  banks  of  the  Mersey,  determined 
to  succeed  ;  and  succeed  he  did,  till  at  last  he  stood 
upon  the  top  rung  of  the  commercial  ladder;  and 
yet  at  every  step  from  first  to  last — as  any  one  may 
see  who  will  read  his  Life — he  held  himself  bound  by 
the  moral  law  of  Jesus  Christ.  And  if  Alexander 
Balfour,  why  not  others  ? 

Yet  suppose  the  choice  has  to  be  made — that  the 
only  alternatives  that  face  a  man  are  ruin  or  dis- 
honesty— what  then?  I  do  not  want  to  speak 
lightly  or  forgetful  of  the  temptations  that  come 
to  some  of  you,  from  which  I  am  delivered.     But 


158  THE  TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

I  know  that  your  own  conscience  is  with  me  when  I 
say  that  a  Christian  cannot  hesitate  ;  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  make  money  ;  it  is  necessary  to  do  what 
is  right  in  the  sight  of  God.  You  had  better  break 
stones  than  break  the  commandments.  Money  you 
can  get,  and  get  easily,  especially  if  you  are  prepared 
to  act  upon  the  wicked  old  adage  that  says,  'Get 
money,  get  it  honestly  if  you  can,  but — get  money ' ; 
but  the  words  of  the  Hebrew  prophet  are  not  yet 
out  of  date,  as  many  a  man  has  found  to  his  cost : 
'  He  that  getteth  riches,  and  not  by  right,  shall  leave 
them  in  the  midst  of  his  days,  and  at  his  end  shall  be 
a  fool'  You  are  afraid  lest  some  day  you  should  be 
gazetted  as  a  *  failure '  ?  Take  heed  that  be  not  the 
judgment  of  the  last  great  day  !  I  have  read  of  one 
who  left  this  world,  his  pockets  bursting  with  yellow 
gold,  but  across  his  life  God  wrote,  *  Thou  fool ! ' 

'  Thou  shall  itol  steal^  and  when  the  final  balance 
is  struck  it  will  be  well  with  them,  and  with  them 
alone,  who  at  all  costs  have  obeyed  that  law. 


ni 

Let  me  conclude  with  one  or  two  further  illustra- 
tions of  the  need  there  is  among  all  classes  to-day 
for  a  more  rigorous  application  of  the  Eighth 
Commandment. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that  this  command- 
ment has  something  to  say  to  employers  of  labour ; 


THE   EIGHTH   COMMANDMENT  1 59 

has  it  not  likewise  to  those  who  sell  their  labour? 
If  a  tradesman,  by  the  use  of  unjust  weights  and 
measures,  defrauds  me  of  one-tenth  of  the  goods 
which  I  order  and  for  which  I  pay,  we  condemn  him 
without  hesitation,  and  the  law,  if  he  be  discovered, 
will  visit  him  with  heavy  penalties.  But  suppose 
I  enter  into  an  engagement  with  an  employer  to 
serve  him  during  a  fixed  number  of  hours  daily, 
in  return  for  a  stipulated  payment,  and  suppose 
that  every  day  I  waste  and  fritter  away  an  hour 
of  the  time  which  is  now,  according  to  the  terms 
of  the  agreement,  no  longer  mine  but  his,  what  essen- 
tial difference  is  there  between  my  conduct  and  that 
of  the  fraudulent  shopkeeper  whose  case  I  have  just 
mentioned  ?  I  have  only  time  for  a  sentence  where 
an  essay  is  needed,  but  we  may  be  sure  that  we  shall 
never  restore  or  attain  to  the  true  relation  between 
master  and  servant,  between  employers  and  em- 
ployed, until  on  both  sides  there  is  a  more  frank 
and  honourable  recognition  of  the  obligations  that 
belong  to  each. 

A  very  curious  chapter  in  the  history  of  morals 
might  be  written  concerning  the  way  in  which  some 
persons  habitually  disregard  the  ordinary  maxims 
of  honesty  when  they  are  dealing  no  longer  with 
individuals,  but  with  public  bodies  or  the  State.  Men 
and  women  who  would  scorn  to  commit  a  vulgar 
theft  will  yet  cheat  a  tramway  company  or  a  railway 
company  without  scruple ;  and  as  for  the  inaccuracy 


l60  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

of  the  returns  of  their  income-tax  paper,  that  is 
almost  taken  as  a  matter  of  course.  But  if  it  is 
wrong  to  defraud  a  shopkeeper,  is  it  not  also 
wrong  to  defraud  a  railway  company?  And  if  it 
is  wrong  to  steal  a  loaf  of  bread,  is  it  only  a 
matter  of  indifference  to  ride,  say,  from  Edinburgh 
to  Portobello  without  paying  for  your  ticket,  or  of 
inconvenience,  if  you  happen  to  be  found  out  ?  And 
as  for  the  dues  justly  claimed  by  the  State,  we  have 
no  more  right  to  escape  their  payment  than  we  have 
to  escape  the  payment  of  our  butcher's  or  our  grocer's 
bill.  If  the  laws  that  regulate  taxation  are  unjust, 
let  them  be  altered ;  but  so  long  as  the  laws  remain, 
and  so  long  as  we  continue  to  enjoy  the  benefit 
of  the  State's  protection,  we  are  bound  to  take  our 
share  of  the  cost  of  its  maintenance.  *  Render  to 
all  their  dues,'  said  the  Apostle  Paul,  'tribute  to 
whom  tribute  is  due ' ;  and  a  greater  than  St.  Paul 
bade  us  render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are 
Csesar's. 

'  Owe  no  man  anything.*  That  is  the  next  injunc- 
tion of  the  Apostle — to  which  if  men  would  give  heed 
it  would  often  save  them  from  the  peril  of  breaking 
the  Eighth  Commandment.  The  credit  system  may 
be  a  necessity  and  a  boon  to  some,  but  it  would 
reduce  the  worry  and  anxiety  of  the  world  and  the 
temptations  to  dishonesty  by  one-fourth  or  one-half, 
if  at  least  those  of  us  who  know  to  a  penny  what 
our  income  is  made  it  a  rule  to  purchase  nothing 


THE   EIGHTH   COMMANDMENT  l6l 

until  we  have  the  money  in  our  pocket  witii  which 
to  pay  for  it. 

*  Render  to  all  their  dues ' ;  but  is  there  not  one 
Creditor  whom  we  are  always  forgetting?  How 
much  owest  thoic  unto  my  Lord? 

'Will  a  man  rob  God?'  the  old  prophet  asked 
in  hot  indignation ;  yet  we  are  doing  it  every  day. 
God  has  parcelled  His  estate  among  us,  and  some  of 
us  have  got  a  little  plot,  and  some  of  us  a  big  one ; 
but  little  or  big,  the  plots  are  all  His,  not  ours  ; 
He  is  the  Owner ;  we  are  only  agents,  trustees. 
Yet  we  use  them  for  ourselves  alone,  without  one 
thought  of  Him  who  let  them  out  to  us,  or  of  those 
for  whose  sakes  we  hold  them.  And  deeper  down 
than  that  our  obligation  to  Him  goes :  *  Thou  owest 
unto  Me  even  thine  own  self  besides.'  Do  we  ever 
think  of  paying  that  debt  ?  Ah  !  brethren,  I  tell  you, 
when  we  judge  righteous  judgment  we  shall  cease  to 
count  that  man  honest  who  pays  the  debts  he  owes 
his  fellow-men  and  forgets  the  debt  he  owes  his  God. 


THE    NINTH    COMMANDMENT 


Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness  against  thy  neighbour.' 

—Exodus  xx.  i6. 


THE  NINTH  COMMANDMENT 

I 

*  If  all  men's  sins/  Mr.  Spurgeon  once  said,  *  were 
divided  into  two  bundles,  half  of  them  would  be 
sins  of  the  tongue.'  It  is  against  these  '  sins  of  the 
tongue,'  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  against  some 
of  them,  that  this  Ninth  Commandment  is  directed. 
I  say  against  '  some  of  them,'  for  obviously  there  are 
many  sins  of  which  the  tongue  is  the  instrument 
which  are  not  covered  by  the  prohibition.  '  Thou 
shalt  not  bear  false  witness  against  thy  neighbour.' 
The  commandment  forbids,  not  untruthfulness  in 
general,  but  one  particular  form  of  untruthfulness. 
According  to  its  primary  meaning,  it  has  in  view 
tribunals  of  justice,  before  which  men  may  be  sum- 
moned to  bear  witness,  and  it  enjoins  upon  them — in 
modern  phraseology — to  speak  '  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth.' 

We  have  already  seen  that,  according  to  the  most 
probable  interpretation,  the  Third  Commandment  is 
a  prohibition,  not  only  of  profanity  but  also  of  per- 
jury.    The  heinousness  of  the  latter  sin  is  thus  twice 

165 


l66  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

brought  home  to  us  in  the  Decalogue,  which  in  the 
first  table  condemns  it  as  a  sin  against  God,  and  in 
the  second  as  a  crime  against  man.  And  it  may  not 
be  amiss  to  emphasize  this  fact  in  a  day  when  false 
swearing  in  our  law-courts  is  said  to  be  of  painful 
and  growing  occurrence.  When  we  remember  that 
perjury  renders  impossible  that  due  administration 
of  justice  upon  which  society  depends  as  the  first 
condition  of  its  existence,  we  begin  to  understand 
how  great  an  enemy  to  all  social  well-being  is  he 
who  defies  and  breaks  this  law.  The  instinct  of 
self-preservation  alone  would  justify  society  in  in- 
flicting on  the  offender  the  heaviest  and  severest 
penalties. 

But  though  this  is  the  primary  meaning,  it  by  no 
means  exhausts  the  significance  of  the  command- 
ment. There  are  multitudes  of  us  who  never  stood 
in  a  witness-box  in  our  lives,  who  have  never  been 
under  the  temptation  of  swearing  falsely.  But 
*  there  is  another  court  of  justice  which  sits  informally 
every  day  and  every  hour' — I  mean  the  court  of 
Public  Opinion,  and  every  day  in  that  court,  in  our 
intercourse  with  others,  we  are  bearing  witness 
that  is  true  or  false. 

Do  not  let  us  affect  a  foolish  contempt  for,  or 
indifference  to,  the  decisions  of  that  court.  It  is  true 
that  at  times  we  must  ignore  it,  at  times  even  act  in 
defiance  of  it.  Nevertheless,  it  has  a  great  and  serious 
function  in  life;  judgment, not  indeed  upon  the  motives. 


THE   NINTH    COMMANDMENT  167 

but  Upon  the  conduct,  of  others  we  must  sometimes 
pass.  In  the  condemnation  of  false  witnessing  is 
implied  the  approbation  of  truthful  witnessing.  God 
means  such  judgment  to  do  its  work,  to  aid  the  right 
and  the  true,  to  thwart  the  wrong  and  the  false.  But 
if  the  witnesses  swear  falsely,  that  Divine  purpose  is 
frustrated,  we  are  robbed  of  the  blessings — not  the 
less  real  because  they  are  so  intangible — which  flow 
from  a  just  and  healthy  public  opinion,  and  all  men 
thereby  are  the  losers.  Therefore  does  this  law  of 
God  demand  that,  in  all  our  judgments  of  others,  we 
shall  be  as  mindful  of  the  sacred  obligations  of  truth 
as  if  we  stood  before  some  tribunal  armed  with  power 
to  visit  every  falsehood  with  the  sternest  penalty. 
There  is  no  kind  of  injustice  or  hurt  that  by  our 
words  or  by  our  silence  we  can  do  to  the  name,  the 
honour,  the  reputation  of  another  that  this  command- 
ment does  not  condemn.  So  that,  though,  as  we 
have  seen,  it  may  not  strictly  be  interpreted  as  the 
condemnation  of  all  forms  of  lying  whatsoever,  never- 
theless its  sweep  is  exceeding  broad,  it  pierces,  sharp 
as  any  two-edged  sword,  to  the  thoughts  and  intents 
of  the  hearts  of  all  of  us. 

Let  us  glance,  then,  at  some  of  the  sins  which  are 
included  within  the  wide  range  of  this  law,  'Thou 
shalt  not  bear  false  witness  against  thy  neighbour.' 
And  if  at  first  we  were  inclined  to  set  down  the 
saying  of  Mr.  Spurgeon  with  which  I  began  as 
a   preacher's    exaggeration,    perhaps   before    I   have 


l68  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

finished  we  shall  be  ready  to  admit  that,  after  all,  he 
was  not  far  from  the  truth. 

II 

Mark,  in  the  first  place,  how  many  and  grave  are 
the  evils  that  group  themselves  under  'sins  of  the 
tongue ' !  Where  many  witnesses  might  be  called, 
I  must  be  content  to  summon  two :  Language  and 
Scripture. 

(i)  Rarely  can  we  find  a  more  vivid  and  impressive 
revelation  of  a  people's  innermost  thought  and  heart 
than  is  to  be  obtained  from  a  careful  examination 
of  its  language.  A  nation's  life  is  mirrored  in  its 
speech.  If,  e.g.,  a  people  be  strangers  to  certain 
shades  of  thought  and  feeling,  the  fact  will  be  reflected 
in  a  corresponding  poverty  of  language ;  and  of 
course  vice  versa.  Similarly,  as  Archbishop  Trench 
has  pointed  out,  in  what  is  perhaps  the  most  inter- 
esting chapter  in  his  interesting  book  on  Words, 
language  is  a  most  faithful  reflex  of  the  moral  life  of 
those  who  use  it.  And  since,  alas !  every  language 
possesses,  as  he  says,  '  words  which  are  the  mourn- 
ful record  of  the  strange  wickedness  which  the  genius 
of  man,  so  fertile  in  evil,  has  invented,'  I  know  of 
no  better  annotation  of  this  Ninth  Commandment 
which  we  could  make  for  ourselves,  than  just  the 
ugly  catalogue  of  English  words  that  describe  the 
many  varieties  of  sins  of  the  tongue.  The  Larger 
Catechism  makes    special    mention   of  unseasonable 


THE   NINTH   COMMANDMENT  169 

speech  or  loquacity,  tale-bearing,  back-biting,  de- 
traction, aggravating  small  faults,  discovering  infirmi- 
ties, impairing  our  neighbours'  credit,  rejoicing  in 
their  disgrace  and  infamy ;  while  a  recent  writer, 
himself  a  distinguished  student  of  language,  sets  forth 
the  evidence  from  the  words  of  our  mouth  in  still 
more  striking  fashion.  '  Calumny,  slander,  misrepre- 
sentation, vituperation,  contumely,  insult,  scurrility, 
railing,  detraction,  whispering,  backbiting,  false  wit- 
ness, depreciation,  vilification,  insinuation,  innuendo, 
abuse,  tattle,  insolence,  obloquy,  sneering,  taunting, 
jibes,  jeers,  personalities,  defamation,  libel,  satire, 
sarcasm,  lampoon,  censoriousness,  slashing  criticism, 
pasquinade,  tale-bearing,  malevolent  spitefulness,  evil 
surmisings,  attributing  motives,  the  base  gossip  of 
busybodies — these,'  he  says,  'and  I  know  not  how 
many  more  expressions,'  show  the  ugly  exuberance 
of  our  language  to  express  the  varieties  of  malice  as 
it  finds  vent  in  malignant  utterance. 

(2)  The  evidence  of  Scripture  is  even  more  im- 
pressive, though  I  am  afraid  that  few  of  us  have  any 
conception  of  the  large  place  which  this  subject  fills 
in  the  sacred  writings.  Open  the  book  of  Proverbs, 
and  you  will  find  scarcely  a  single  page  without  some 
reference  to  it.  Turn  from  Proverbs  to  the  Psalms, 
and  as  Dr.  Whyte  says,  '  You  would  think  that  the 
Psalmists  scarcely  suffer  from  anything  else  worth 
speaking  about  but  the  evil  tongues  of  their  friends 
and  their  enemies.'     The  Apostle   James,   as   every 


170  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

reader  of  the  New  Testament  knows,  is  very  bold 
when  he  touches  on  this  matter.  Indeed,  as  Jowett, 
the  late  Master  of  Balliol,  once  said,  his  words  are 
rather  too  strong  for  our  nerves  to-day.  Neverthe- 
less, let  us  hear  them  again  in  all  their  uncompro- 
mising directness  :  '  If  any  stumbleth  not  in  word,'  he 
says,  '  the  same  is  a  perfect  man,  able  to  bridle  the 
whole  body  also'  ;  and  again,  '  If  any  man  thinketh 
himself  to  be  religious,  while  he  bridleth  not  his 
tongue,  but  deceiveth  his  heart,  this  man's  religion  is 
vain.'  But  of  course  Scripture's  greatest  word  on  the 
subject — which  I  will  not  weaken  by  any  comment  of 
my  own — was  spoken  by  the  Master  Himself:  ^Andl 
say  iLfito  yozi,  that  every  idle  word  that  men  shall  speak ^ 
they  shall  give  account  thereof  in  the  day  of  Judgment. 
For  by  thy  words  thou  shalt  be  justified^  and  by  thy 
words  thou  shalt  be  condemned! 

Not  less  manifold  than  their  variety  is  the  mischief 
that  is  wrought  by  these  '  sins  of  the  tongue.'  The 
slanderer,  the  tale-bearer,  the  backbiter,  these  '  men- 
slugs  and  human  serpentry ' — their  slimy  trail  is 
everywhere !  Chattering,  gossiping  busybodies  are 
the  devil's  best  allies.  One  in  a  church  can  make  a 
minister's  best  work  fruitless,  and  do  more  mischief 
than  twelve  months'  preaching  can  undo.  Where 
they  come  nothing  is  sacred,  and  nothing  safe.  They 
poison  the  wine  of  friendship.  They  mingle  worm- 
wood and  gall  in  the  cup  of  the  saintliest.  They  rob 
life  of  its  choicest  treasures,  its  trust,  its  confidence, 


THE   NINTH   COMMANDMENT  171 

its  joy,  and  in  their  stead  they  bring  in  suspicion  and 
worry  and  heartache.  *  The  tongue  of  a  busybody,' 
says  Bishop  Hall,  '  is  like  the  tails  of  Samson's  foxes  ; 
it  carries  fire-brands,  and  is  enough  to  set  the  whole 
field  of  the  world  in  a  flame.'  '  A  backbiting  tongue 
hath  disquieted  many ;  strong  cities  hath  it  pulled 
down  and  overthrown  the  houses  of  great  men.'  Or, 
to  go  back  to  the  plain,  strong  words  of  James : 
'  Behold  how  great  a  forest  is  kindled  by  how  small 
a  fire !  And  the  tongue  is  a  fire :  the  world  of 
iniquity  among  our  members  is  the  tongue,  which 
defileth  the  whole  body,  and  setteth  on  fire  the  wheel 
of  nature,  and  is  set  on  fire  by  hell.  For  every  kind 
of  beasts  and  birds,  of  creeping  things  and  things  in 
the  sea,  is  tamed,  and  hath  been  tamed  by  mankind : 
but  the  tongue  can  no  man  tame  ;  it  is  a  restless  evil, 
it  is  full  of  deadly  poison.' 


Ill 

What  are  the  sources  from  which  these  evils  spring  ? 
They  are  not  due,  for  the  most  part,  I  think,  to 
malicious  and  murderous  intent.  Men  do,  it  is  true, 
sometimes  deliberately  plot  and  plan  to  destroy 
another's  good  name,  as  sometimes  a  murderer  will  lie 
in  wait  for  his  victim.  But,  happily,  the  one  crime  is 
as  rare  as  is,  comparatively  speaking,  the  other.  No  ; 
it  is  from  causes  wholly  different  from  these  that  sins 
of  the  tongue  for  the  most  part  spring.    We  sin  with 


172  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

our  tongue,  not  because  we  plan,  but  because — as 
Bishop  Butler  says,  in  a  great  sermon  which  Dr. 
Whyte  declares  '  ought  to  be  read  at  least  once  a 
month  by  all  the  men  and  all  the  women  who  have 
tongues  in  their  heads' — we  fail  to  govern  and 
control  our  tongues.  Let  me  split  up  that  general 
statement  into  two  or  three  particulars. 

(i)  There  is,  first,  the  habit  of  unrestrained 
talkativeness,  or,  as  Butler  puts  it,  '  the  disposition  to 
be  talking  abstracted  from  the  consideration  of  what 
is  to  be  said,  with  very  little  or  no  regard  to,  or  thought 
of,  doing  either  good  or  harm.' 

I  should  be  sorry  to  say  a  single  word  that  could 
be  construed  into  a  depreciation  of  the  art  of  conver- 
sation. There  is  nothing  more  delightful,  or  more 
truly  educational,  than  what  Johnson  calls  'good 
talk  ' ;  and  the  conversational  art  is  certainly  one  in 
which  we  in  this  country  are  far  from  being  proficient. 
A  great  deal  has  been  said  and  written  in  praise  of 
the  virtues  of  silence  ;  yet  silence  may  be  as  barren 
as  any  speech  ;  and,  after  all,  what  is  the  writing 
of  books  but  another  way  of  talking  ?  Every  one 
knows  Mr.  Morley's  little  pleasantry  at  the  expense 
of  Thomas  Carlyle  and  his  '  golden  gospel  of  silence 
effectively  compressed  in  thirty-five  volumes.'  Never- 
theless, as  the  wise  man  says,  '  In  the  multitude  of 
words  there  wanteth  not  sin.'  The  loquacious  tongue 
had  need  be  well  bridled  and  bitted.  Great  talkers 
who  enjoy  the  exercise  of  their  gift  are  always  on 


THE   NINTH   COMMANDMENT  173 

the  edge  of  saying  more  than  they  know,  and,  as  Paul 
says  about  tattlers  and  busybodies,  of  speaking  things 
which  they  ought  not.  Mr.  Talkative  may  not  be  an 
altogether  bad  fellow,  but  he  is  a  son  of  Saywell,  who 
dwells  in  Prating  Row,  and  he  is  related  both  by 
blood  and  marriage  to  many  questionable  characters ; 
and  if  we  are  wise  we  shall  not  cultivate  too  close 
an  acquaintance  with  him. 

(2)  Again,  there  is  what  Butler  calls  '  the  giving  of 
characters' — 'the  strong  inclination  most  have  to 
be  talking  of  the  concerns  and  behaviour  of  their 
neighbours.' 

Judgment  upon  the  conduct  of  others  we  are 
sometimes  compelled  to  pass.  To  discuss  ideas  or 
principles  wholly  apart  from  individuals  by  whom 
they  are  illustrated,  and  in  whom,  so  to  speak,  they 
take  shape,  is  never  possible  for  long.  Begin  to  talk 
politics,  and  in  less  than  five  minutes  you  will  find 
yourself  talking  about  politicians.  Conversation 
would  be  a  cold  and  colourless  thing  indeed  if  it 
were  always  confined  to  the  realm  of  abstract  ideas. 
*  Women,'  says  a  distinguished  woman-writer,  '  are 
born  to  take  an  interest  in  "  persons,"  whatever  men 
may  be.'  i\nd  men,  whatever  they  may  say,  are  not 
very  different.  Let  all  this  be  granted ;  yet  will 
any  one  deny  that  '  personal  talk '  fills  far  too  large 
a  place  in  our  general  conversation?  When  we 
remember  how  wholly  gratuitous  and  uncalled  for 
most  of  our  judgments  of  others  are  ;  when  we  think 


174  THE  TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

how  difficult — often,  how  impossible — it  is  to  judge 
righteous  judgment ;  when  we  call  to  mind  what  we 
ourselves  have  suffered  at  the  hands  of  ignorant  and 
fussy  busybodies,  shall  we  not  do  well  to  seek  to  turn 
the  rising  tide  of  conversation  into  less  dangerous 
channels?     You  remember  what  Wordsworth  says — 

*  I  am  not  one  who  oft  or  much  delight 
To  season  my  fireside  with  personal  talk. 

Better  than  such  discourse  doth  silence  long, 
Long,  barren  silence,  square  with  my  desire. 

Nor  can  I  not  believe  but  that  hereby 

Great  gains  are  mine  :  for  thus  I  live  remote 

From  evil-speaking ;  rancour  never  sought, 

Comes  to  me  not  ;  malignant  truth,  or  lie. 

Hence  have  I  genial  seasons,  hence  have  I 

Smooth  passions,  smooth  discourse  and  joyous  thought : 

And  thus  from  day  to  day  my  little  boat 

Rocks  in  its  harbour  lodging  peaceably.' 

(3)  One  other  source  of  evil-speaking  may  be 
referred  to  in  a  sentence — I  mean  the  habit  of 
exaggeration.  Exaggeration,  to  some  of  us,  may 
appear  a  very  venial  offence ;  but  as  one  whose 
command  of  exact  and  accurate  speech  is  equalled 
by  the  depth  and  clearness  of  his  spiritual  insight 
says,  he  who  by  habitual,  unregarded,  unconscious 
untruthfulness  of  language  breaks  '  the  great  law  that 
word  and  fact  ought  to  correspond,'  wrongs  and 
wounds  himself  even  when  he  does  not  injure  others. 
It  may  seem  a  trifling  matter  to  sacrifice  accuracy  of 


THE    NINTH   COMMANDMENT  175 

detail  in  order  to  give  greater  colour  and  force  to 
what  we  are  saying  ;  but,  as  the  same  writer  says,  the 
claims  of  truth  would  be  overwhelming  '  if  we  could 
only  see  what  comes  of  the  difference  between 
exaggeration  and  truthful  self-restraint  in  the  long- 
run.' 

*  Prune  thou  thy  words,  the  thoughts  control 

That  o'er  thee  swell  and  throng  ; 
They  will  condense  within  thy  soul, 
And  change  to  purpose  strong.'  ^ 


IV 

How  may  these  sins  of  the  tongue  be  overcome  ? 
The  question  has  been  answered  in  part  already. 
If  they  spring  from  a  habit  of  unrestrained  talkative- 
ness, we  must  learn  to  '  hold  our  tongue ' ;  if  from  a 
too  great  readiness  to  pass  judgment  upon  others,  we 
must  lay  to  heart  the  word  of  Jesus,  '  Judge  not,  that 
ye  be  not  judged  ' ;  if  from  a  tendency  to  exaggera- 
tion, we  must  learn  to  esteem  the  truth  above  all 
things.  We  must  take  heed  unto  our  ways,  that  we 
offend  not  with  our  tongue ;  we  must  set  a  watch 
before  our  mouth,  and  keep  the  door  of  our  lips. 
And  let  us  not  forget  there  is  Another  who  is  watching 
and  listening,  in  whose  presence  we  continually  are. 
I  never  speak  on  a  subject  like  this  without  feeling 

1  See  a  sermon  entitled  *  Strong  Words '  by  Dean  Church,  in  his 
Pascal  and  other  Sermons.  Church  was  a  disciple  of  Butler,  and  this 
sermon  is  in  every  way  worthy  of  his  distinguished  master. 


176  THE  TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

the  difficulty  of  investing  it  with  the  importance  and 
seriousness  which  really  belong  to  it.  And  yet, 
surely,  no  one  who  hears  these  solemn  words  of 
Christ  which  I  have  already  quoted — '  By  thy  words 
thou  shalt  be  justified,  and  by  thy  words  thou  shalt 
be  condemned ' — can  fail  to  realize  how  serious  and 
important  the  subject  is.  And  just  as  *  we  instinc- 
tively lower  our  voice  and  limit  our  words  when  we 
are  in  the  presence  of  one  whose  wisdom  or  whose 
greatness  awes  us,'  so  let  us,  realizing  at  all  times  the 
presence  of  Christ,  not  only  act,  but  speak,  as  those 
who  shall  one  day  give  account. 

And,  above  all,  let  this  be  our  daily  prayer,  '  Create 
within  me  a  clean  heart,  O  God.'  Evil-speaking  is 
the  fruit  of  evil-thinking ;  and  evil-thinking  is  to  be 
cast  out  only  by  a  new  spirit,  even  the  spirit  of  love, 
that  'thinketh  no  evil.'  It  has  been  suggested,  I 
believe,  that  there  may  be  in  the  cry  of  the  prophet 
Isaiah,  '  Woe  is  me  !  for  I  am  undone  ;  because  I  am 
a  man  of  unclean  lips,'  some  reference  to  the  sin  of 
profanity  in  his  early  life.  I  do  not  know  that  there 
is  any  truth  in  the  suggestion  ;  but  sure  I  am  that 
we  have  all  need  of  the  purifying  fire  that  touched 
the  prophet's  lips,  that  so  our  iniquity  may  be  taken 
away  and  our  sin  purged. 

'The  tongue  can  no  man  tame!'  Nay,  verily; 
therefore  the  more  earnestly  do  we  need  to  pray, 
*  Set  Thou,  O  Lord,  a  watch  before  my  mouth ;  keep 
Thou  the  door  of  my  lips.' 


THE  TENTH    COMMANDMENT 


*  Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbour's  house,  thou  shalt  not  covet 
thy  neighbour's  wife,  nor  his  manservant,  nor  his  maidservant,  nor  his 
ox,  nor  his  ass,  nor  anything  that  is  thy  neighbour's.'— ExODUS  xx.  17. 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT 

There'  is  one  very  obvious  difference  between  this 
commandment  and  all  the  nine  that  precede  it.  In 
them  it  is  some  overt  act  of  evil— idolatry,  murder, 
theft,  lying — that  is  forbidden.  But  this  command- 
ment has  to  do,  not  with  the  words  of  the  mouth, 
nor  with  the  deeds  of  the  hand,  but  with  the  thoughts 
of  the  heart.  Thus  the  last  word  of  the  Decalogue  is 
its  sharpest,  most  penetrating  point.  I  may  do  no 
murder,  I  may  never  steal,  I  may  never  commit 
adultery,  I  may  never  bow  my  knee  before  some 
idol  of  Vv^ood  or  stone,  but  if  my  heart  is  in  bondage 
to  evil  desires,  even  though  as  yet  they  may  not  have 
broken  forth  in  evil  deeds,  this  great  law  of  God  will 
not  hold  me  guiltless. 

It  will  help  us  to  realize  the  true  inwardness  of 
this  Tenth  Commandment  if  we  call  to  mind  the  part 
that  it  played  in  the  spiritual  development  of  the 
Apostle  Paul.  In  that  priceless  fragment  of  auto- 
biography preserved  for  us  in  the  seventh  chapter 
of  Romans,  Paul  says  :  '  I  had  not  known  sin,  except 
through  the  law  :  for  I  had  not  known  coveting  except 
the  law  had  said.  Thou  shalt  not  covet:  but  sin,  finding 

179 


l80  THE  TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

occasion,  wrought  in  me,  through  the  commandment, 
all  manner  of  coveting.'     In  the  days  of  his  youth, 
when  he  sat,  an  eager  student,  at  the  feet  of  Gamaliel, 
Paul   knew  himself  innocent  of  all   outward   trans- 
gressions.    As   the  words  of  the  law  fell   upon  his 
ear,  '  Thou  shalt  have  none  other  gods  before   Me,' 
'  Thou  shalt  not  make  unto  thee  any  graven  image,' 
'  Honour  thy  father  and  thy  mother,'  '  Thou  shalt  not 
kill,'  *  Thou  shalt  not  steal,'  like  the  rich  young  ruler 
he  could  say,  '  All  these  have  I  kept  from  my  youth 
up ' ;  in  all  these  things  he  was  blameless.    But  when 
the  commandment, 'Thou  shalt  not  covet,'  came  home 
to  him,  straightway  young  Saul  of  Tarsus  knew  him- 
self a  sinner  before  God.     Like  an  electric   search- 
light, it  flashed  its  piercing  ray  into  the  dark,  unswept 
corners  of  his  heart,  and  evil  he  had  never  dreamed  of 
lay  discovered  to  his  sight :  '  The  law  is  spiritual,  but 
I  am  carnal,  sold  under  sin.   O  wretched  man  that  I  am^ 
who  shall  deliver  me  out  of  the  body  of  this  death  ? ' 
This  Tenth  Commandment  forbids  all  forms  of  evil 
desire  whatsoever — as  the  Shorter  Catechism  has  it 
— '  all  discontentment  with  our  own  estate,  envying  or 
grieving  at  the  good   of  our  neighbour,  and  all  in- 
ordinate motions  and  affections  to  anything  that  is 
his.'     It  is  a  fact  of  dark  and  profound  significance 
that,  twice  over  in   his   Epistles,  Paul  should  name 
this   sin   of  covetousness   in   the   same  breath  with 
'  fornication,  uncleanness,  passion,  evil  desire.'  ^     The 

1  Col.  iii.  5  ;  Ephes.  v.  3,  5. 


THE  TENTH  COMMANDMENT  i8l 

connection  is  not  one  of  mere  chance.  Paul  is  not  a 
writer  who  sprinkles  his  words  at  random  over  the 
page  ;  and  when  he  brackets  covetousness  with  these 
deadly  sins  of  the  flesh,  what  he  means  to  imply  is 
that  these  bitter,  poisonous  fruits  grow  on  the  same 
tree  and  spring  from  the  same  root.  Covetousness, 
envy,  pride,  wrath—'  all  these  four  elements  of  self,' 
says  William  Law,  '  are  tied  together  in  one  insepar- 
able band  ;  they  mutually  generate  and  are  generated 
from  one  another ;  they  have  but  one  common  life, 
and  must  all  of  them  live  or  all  die  together.'  I  may 
feel  no  '  love  of  pelf,'  but  '  if  I  desire  anything  but 
that  which  God  would  have  me  to  be  and  do,  I 
stick  in  the  mire  of  covetousness.' 

All  this  is  most  true,  and  we  shall  do  well  to  lay  it 
to  heart.  But  inasmuch  as  it  is  the  spirit  of  Mam- 
monism,  the  lust  for  gold,  the  passion  for  getting, 
at  whatever  cost  to  ourselves  or  to  others,  which 
forms  one  of  our  gravest  spiritual  perils  to-day,  it 
is  against  this  particular  form  of  the  sin  of  covet- 
ousness that  I  want  specially  to  turn  this  sharp 
two-edged  sword  of  the  Word  of  God. 

And  let  no  one  say  or  think  that  that  is  an  appli- 
cation of  the  commandment  suitable  enough  if  I  were 
addressing  an  audience  of  millionaires,  but  somewhat 
out  of  place  here.  '  You  are  more  greedy  over  your 
mess  of  pulse,'  said  Thomas  a  Becket  to  a  monk 
one  day,  'than  I  am  over  my  partridge.'  And  it 
is  not  necessary  to  have  ten  thousand  pounds  a  year 


l82  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

to  forget  what  Christ  said,  that  a  man's  Hfe  consisteth 
not  in  the  abundance  of  the  things  that  he  possesseth. 
The  cankerworm  of  covetousness  may  devour  in 
the  poor  man's  cottage  as  well  as  in  the  rich  man's 
palace.  A  penny-piece  is  not  very  big,  but  if  you 
hold  it  near  enough  to  your  eye  it  will  shut  out  the 
whole  heavens  from  your  vision,  and  will  do  it  just  as 
effectually  as  a  golden  guinea.  Therefore  it  is  to  the 
men  and  women  who  are  holding  the  penny-pieces  of 
this  life  so  near  to  them  that  they  never  catch  so 
much  as  a  glimpse  of  what  lies  beyond  that  I  speak 
to-day. 

I 

*  Thou  shalt  not  covet' — note  how  the  Bible  itself 
italicizes  that  commandment  for  us. 

Have  you  observed  how  the  Tenth  Commandment 
bends  round — if  I  may  so  put  it — to  meet  the  First  ? 
What  is  the  First  Commandment  ? — '  Thou  shalt  have 
none  other  gods  before  Me.'  What  is  the  Tenth  ? — 
*  Thou  shalt  not  covet'  Now,  what  says  the  Apostle 
Paul  ?  *  Covetousness,  which  is  idolatry!  So,  then, 
he  who  breaks  the  Tenth  Commandment  breaks  like- 
wise the  First,  for  he  sets  up  an  idol  in  the  place  of 
God.  This  identification  of  covetousness  with  idola- 
try— which,  perhaps,  more  than  aught  else  may  help 
some  of  us  to  realise  its  true  character,  its  hatefulness 
and  heinousness  in  the  sight  of  God — is  not  un- 
common in  the  New  Testament.     'Ye  cannot  serve 


THE  TENTH   COMMANDMENT  183 

God  and '  What  ?  If  we  were  hearing  the  quota- 
tion for  the  first  time,  how  should  we  have  expected 
it  to  finish  ? — '  Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  the  world/ 
or  '  God  and  the  devil.'  But  Christ  knew  that  there 
is  no  more  deadly  rival  of  the  love  and  service  of 
God  than  the  love  and  service  of  money,  and  there- 
fore He  said,  '  Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  Mammon.' 
Paul  has  the  same  tremendous  contrast  in  his  mind, 
when,  writing  to  Timothy,  he  bids  him  '  Charge 
them  that  are  rich  in  this  present  world,  that  they  be 
not  high-minded,  nor  have  their  hope  set  on  the 
uncertainty  of  riches,  but  on  God.'  All  covetousness, 
in  the  last  analysis,  is  idolatry. 

Or  read  the  history  of  the  Bible,  and  mark  along 
its  whole  course  the  names  of  those  whose  tragic 
doom,  like  some  flaring  beacon-light  on  a  rock- 
bound  coast,  warns  us  of  the  sin  and  peril  of  covet- 
ousness. From  the  valley  of  Achor,  where  they 
stoned  Achan  with  stones  for  the  trespass  which 
he  committed  against  the  Lord  ;  from  the  vineyard 
of  Naboth,  where  Ahab  the  king  reddened  his  hands 
in  the  blood  of  innocency ;  from  the  presence  of 
Elisha  the  prophet,  whence  Gehazi  his  servant  went 
out  a  leper  as  white  as  snow ;  from  the  house  of 
Haman,  where  Haman  himself  perished  miserably 
on  the  gallows  built  for  Mordecai  the  Jew ;  from 
the  field  of  blood,  bought  with  the  price  of  blood, 
where  the  guilty  soul  of  Judas  '  flared  forth  in  the 
dark';    from   the   double    and    doubly -dishonoured 


l84  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

grave  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira  in  Jerusalem,  comes 
the  solemn  warning  cry,  '  Take  heed — take  heed — and 
beware  of  covetousness.'  '  Now  I  saw  in  my  dream, 
that  at  the  further  side  of  that  plain  ["  a  delicate  plain 
called  Ease"]  was  a  little  hill  called  Lucre,  and  in 
that  hill  a  silver-mine,  which  some  of  them  that  had 
formerly  gone  that  way,  because  of  the  rarity  of 
it,  had  turned  aside  to  see ;  but  going  too  near  the 
brink  of  the  pit,  the  ground  being  deceitful  under 
them,  broke,  and  they  were  slain ;  some  also  had 
been  maimed  there,  and  could  not  to  their  dying  day 
be  their  own  men  again/ 

But  the  most  impressive  commentary  of  all  on  the 
Tenth  Commandment  is  to  be  found  in  the  words 
of  Jesus.  I  shall  not  soon  forget  the  shock  of  surprise 
with  which,  some  years  ago,  I  read  an  article  in 
one  of  our  theological  magazines  in  which  the  writer 
pieced  together  the  teaching  of  Jesus  concerning  the 
use  of  money.  Never  before  had  I  realized  how 
large  a  place  that  subject  filled  in  His  public  ministry  ; 
and  if  any  one  is  disposed  to  murmur  because,  instead 
of  'preaching  the  Gospel,'  I  have  turned  aside  to 
speak  of  this  curse  of  Mammonism,  let  me  say  to 
him  that,  if  we  preachers  spoke  about  it  as  Christ 
did,  there  would  be  not  merely  an  occasional  pulpit 
reference,  but  a  sermon  on  the  subject  at  least  once  a 
month.  '  We  might  have  thought,'  says  John  Ruskin, 
*  if  we  had  been  asked  what  a  Divine  teacher  would 
be  most  likely  to  teach,  that  He  would  have   left 


THE  TENTH   COMMANDMENT  1 85 

to  inferior  persons  to  give  directions  about  money, 
and  Himself  only  spoken  concerning  faith  and  love 
and  the  discipline  of  the  passions  and  the  guilt  of 
crimes  of  soul  against  soul.  But  not  so.  He  speaks 
in  general  terms  of  these.  But  He  does  not  speak 
parables  about  them  for  all  men's  memory,  nor  per- 
mit Himself  fierce  indignation  against  them  in  all 
men's  sight.  The  Pharisees  bring  Him  an  adulteress. 
He  writes  her  forgiveness  on  the  dust  of  which  He 
had  formed  her.  Another,  despised  of  all  for  known 
sin,  He  recognised  as  the  giver  of  unknown  love. 
But  with  a  whip  of  small  cords  He  drives  out  of 
the  Temple  traffickers  and  thieves  ;  while  the  practical 
command  to  the  only  seeker  of  advice  of  whom  it  is 
recorded  that  Jesus  loved  him,  is,  briefly,  about  his 
property :  "  Sell  all  that  thou  hast,  and  give  to  the 
poor,  and  thou  shalt  have  treasure  in  heaven." '  Let 
us  turn  to  the  Gospels  for  ourselves.  We  have 
already  seen  how,  over  against  the  love  and  worship 
of  God,  Christ  sets  the  love  and  worship  of  Mammon. 
Listen  to  Him  as  He  opens  His  mouth  to  teach  His 
disciples  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  presently 
you  will  hear  Him  say,  '  Lay  not  up  for  yourselves 
treasures  upon  the  earth,  where  moth  and  rust  doth 
consume,  and  where  thieves  break  through  and  steal ; 
but  lay  up  for  yourselves  treasures  in  heaven,  where 
neither  moth  nor  rust  doth  consume,  and  where 
thieves  do  not  break  through  and  steal.'  The  same 
truth  crops  out  in  parable  after  parable.     The  seed  of 


1 86  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

the  Word  is  choked  by  '  the  care  of  the  world  and  the 
deceitfulness  of  riches ' ;  the  unforgiving  servant  is 
condemned  because,  after  all  his  debt  had  been 
forgiven  him,  he  went  out,  and  found  one  of  his 
fellow-servants  which  owed  him  a  hundred  pence, 
and  laid  hold  on  him,  and  took  him  by  the  throat, 
saying,  '  Pay  what  thou  owest ! '  the  parables  of  the 
Rich  Fool  and  the  Prodigal  Son  forbid  alike  the  selfish 
accumulation  and  the  wasteful  squandering  of  wealth ; 
and  the  story  of  Dives  and  Lazarus  is  the  tremen- 
dous answer  of  our  Lord  to  the  Pharisees  '  who  were 
lovers  of  money,'  and  who  scoffed  at  His  words. 
Again  and  again,  and  yet  again,  does  Christ  lift 
the  warning  finger  and  cry,  '  Take  heed,  and  beware 
of  covetousness.'  If  we  listen  to  Him,  if  we  receive 
Him  into  our  house,  our  ill-gotten  gains  will  give  us 
no  peace  till,  like  Zacchaeus,  we  are  ready  to  vow, 
*  Behold,  Lord,  the  half  of  my  goods  I  give  to  the 
poor  ;  and  if  I  have  wrongfully  exacted  aught  of  any 
man,  I  restore  fourfold.' 


II 

Do  I  exaggerate  when  I  say  that  in  this  spirit  of 
Mammonism  lies  our  greatest  peril  to-day  ?  '  The 
love  of  money  is  the  root  of  all  evil ' :  the  words  are 
a  mistranslation,  as  every  reader  of  the  Revised 
Version  knows ;  yet  if  the  Apostle  had  actually  so 


THE  TENTH   COMMANDiMENT  187 

written,  they  would  hardly  have  been  too  strong 
for  things  as  we  see  them  to-day.  There  is  scarcely 
any  great  social  evil  of  our  time,  about  the  roots  of 
which  the  greed  of  gold  has  not  so  intertwined  itself 
that  even  good  men  almost  despair  of  uprooting  it ; 
and,  as  one  writer  has  said,  the  one  conspicuous 
feature  of  society  as  a  whole  is  '  the  power  of  money 
organized  and  entrenched  against  the  kingdom  of 
God.'  It  is  Mammon  that  built  the  den  of  the 
sweater ;  it  is  Mammon  that  has  given  its  strength 
to  the  gambling  mania  which,  like  a  fever,  is  raging 
in  our  nation's  life-blood ;  it  is  Mammon  in  the  form 
of  limited  liability  companies  that  is  making  of  our 
drink  traffic  a  kind  of  deadly  octopus  that  threatens 
to  strangle  us ;  it  is  Mammon  that  is  answerable  for 
the  cruel  inhumanity,  the  shameless  fraud  and  trickery, 
which  has  so  often  disgraced  our  dealings  with 
helpless  native  races.  Can  anything,  too,  be  more 
calculated  to  make  good  men  uneasy  than  the  ugly 
facts  which  every  now  and  then  come  to  light 
revealing  the  growing  possibility  of  the  corruption 
of  the  Press  through  the  power  of  the  purse  ?  God 
have  mercy  upon  us  if  our  newspapers  pass  into  the 
hands  of  cunning  and  wealthy  schemers,  who  care 
nothing  for  justice  and  truth,  and  seek  only  the  service 
of  their  own  selfish  ends. 

And  let  no  one  think  that  the  Church  of  Christ  is 
free  from  peril.  John  Wesley  used  to  prophesy  that, 
if  ever    Methodism    were    destroyed,   it    would    be 


1 88  THE   TEN    COMMANDMENTS 

destroyed  by  Mammonism.  His  last  words  to  the 
Methodist  Societies — spoken  when,  after  sixty  or 
seventy  years  of  service,  he  was  sinking  into  the  dust — 
consisted  of  the  most  solemn  and  impressive  warnings 
on  this  subject ;  and  assuredly  this  is  not  the  day  in 
which  to  forget  them.  A  distinguished  evangelist, 
who  is  at  the  same  time  an  enthusiastic  abstainer,  has 
recorded  it  as  his  deliberate  conviction  that  if,  in 
the  Methodist  Church,  drunkenness  has  slain  its 
thousands,  Mammonism  has  slain  its  tens  of  thou- 
sands. 

Of  the  effects  of  the  evil  of  covetousness  on  the 
individual  I  can  speak  now  only  one  word.  The  heart 
of  the  covetous  shrivels  and  withers  within  him.  It 
was  with  profound  truth  that  Tennyson  wrote  of '  the 
narrowing  lust  of  gold.'  Every  one  has  read  of  Silas 
Marner,  in  George  Eliot's  lovely  story,  withdrawing 
himself  from  his  kind,  shutting  himself  up  with  his 
guineas,  caring  and  living  only  for  them,  until  his  life 
became  '  like  a  rivulet  that  has  sunk  far  down  from 
the  grassy  fringe  of  its  old  breadth  into  a  little 
shivering  thread  that  cuts  a  groove  for  itself  in  the 
barren  sand.'  That  is  the  penalty  of  the  gold-heaper  : 
he  gets  his  wealth — at  the  cost  of  himself.  Did  you 
ever  ponder  that  deep  saying  of  the  Psalmist :  '  He 
gave  them  their  request,  but  sent  leanness  into  their 
soul ' }  Earth  has  not  any  sight  so  pitiful  as  that — 
the  shrinking  and  shrivelling  of  a  soul  amid  the  piled- 
up  splendours  of  material  wealth.     See  you  do  not 


THE   TENTH    COMMANDMENT  1 89 

pay   that  price   for  your   getting.      '  Wealth    is   the 
devil's  conjurer  ' ;  therefore  take  heed 

'  Lest  gaining  gain  on  thee,  and  make  thee  dim 
To  all  things  else.' 

Again  I  say,  it  is  no  question  of  amount ;  once  let 
the  passion  to  get  and  to  have  become  supreme,  and, 
like  a  devouring  fire,  it  will  desolate  all  the  fairest 
provinces  of  the  soul,  leaving  them  only  a  charred 
and  blackened  waste. 


Ill 

How  is  the  covetous  spirit  to  be  conquered  and 
cast  out  ?  For  conquered  and  cast  out  it  can  be.  Said 
the  Apostle  Paul,  *  I  had  not  known  sin,  except  the 
law  had  said.  Thou  shalt  not  covet ' ;  yet  the  troubled 
sea  ceased  its  unquiet  tossings,  and  the  man  who 
wrote  that  lived  to  write  this  also :  '  I  have  learned, 
in  whatsoever  state  I  am,  therein  to  be  content.  I 
know  how  to  be  abased,  and  I  know  also  how  to 
abound  :  in  everything  and  in  all  things  have  I  learned 
the  secret  both  to  be  filled  and  to  be  hungry,  both  to 
abound  and  to  be  in  want.  I  can  do  all  things  in 
Him  that  strengtheneth  me.'  Paul  had  learned  the 
song  that  the  pilgrims  heard  the  shepherd-boy  sing 
in  the  Valley  of  Humiliation — 

*  He  that  is  down,  needs  fear  no  fall, 
He  that  is  low,  no  pride  ; 
He  that  is  humble,  ever  shall 
Have  God  to  be  his  guide. 


190  THE   TEN   COMMANDMENTS 

I  am  content  with  what  I  have, 

Little  be  it,  or  much  ; 
And,  Lord,  contentment  still  I  crave,  • 

Because  Thou  savest  such. 
Fulness  to  such  a  burden  is 

That  go  on  pilgrimage  ; 
Here  little,  and  hereafter  bliss, 

Is  best  from  age  to  age.' 

* "  Do  you  hear  him  ? "  said  Mr.  Greatheart  ; 
"  I  will  dare  say  that  this  boy  lives  a  merrier 
life,  and  wears  more  of  that  herb  called  hearts- 
ease in  his  bosom,  than  he  that  is  clad  in  silk  and 
velvet." ' 

The  spirit  of  covetousness,  I  say,  can  be  cast  out ; 
but  how  ?  *  Take  heed  and  beware  of  covetousness ' — 
that  is  the  first  thing.  The  evil  seed  springeth  and 
groweth  we  know  not  how.  What  a  revelation  there 
is  in  the  statement  of  St.  Francis  of  Sales  that,  in  all 
his  experience  as  a  confessor,  no  one  had  ever 
confessed  to  him  the  sin  of  covetousness  !  And  what 
need  have  we  all  to  pray,  with  the  Psalmist,  *  Cleanse 
thou  me  from  secret  faults ' — from  the  faults  that  are 
hidden  not  only  from  the  eyes  of  others,  but  even 
from  my  own  eyes !  And  again,  because  covetous- 
ness is  idolatry,  we  must  learn  to  give  to  God  the 
first  place  in  our  life.  And  because  covetousness  is 
selfishness,  we  must  learn  that  love  which  is  utter 
selflessness,  '  the  rules  for  fulfilling  all  rules,  the  new 
commandment  for  keeping  all  the  old  command- 
ments.' And,  above  all,  because  covetousness  is  not 
a  matter  of  the  lips  or  of  the  hands,  but  of  the  heart, 


THE   TENTH   COMMANDMENT  191 

therefore  must  we  open  our  hearts  to  receive  Christ, 
that  every  thought  may  be  brought  into  captivity  to 
the  obedience  of  Him. 

Ah,  brethren,  I  may  keep  my  hands  from  theft  and 
my  lips  from  evil-speaking,  but  these  things  that  are 
within,  the  thoughts  of  the  heart — who  is  sufficient 
for  these  things  ?  '  I  can  call  spirits  from  the  vasty 
deep,'  boasted  Owen  Glendower.  'Why,  so  can  1/ 
was  the  mocking  answer,  *  and  so  can  any  man  ;  but 
will  they  come  when  you  do  call  for  them  ? '  And 
where  is  he  who  has  power  to  cast  out  the  devil  of 
covetousness,  and  bid  him  enter  no  more  into  a  man  ? 
I  tell  you,  there  is  no  answer  save  in  Him  whose 
voice  Paul  heard  and  answered  ;  and  this  Man  com- 
mandeth  even  the  unclean  spirits  of  selfishness  and 
greed,  and  they  do  obey  Him. 


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